President Donald Trump.
Well now, there’s a phrase we didn’t bank on.
Last week we ate a lot of words, had to look at our shoes in embarrassment at how routinely we ridiculed his candidacy, and accept we have entered the post-truth, pre-post-feminist, pre-post-racial era.
It is depressing to think that, given the misogyny and xenophobia of his electioneering, even some inclusive Americans saw him as any answer. Depressing, but worth considering some early take-aways:
1) Canada is in the worst position it has ever been with an incoming president. Our prime minister, premier and mayor are all on record as condemning Trump as he campaigned – for acceptable reason, but nevertheless bound to be remembered. He truly thinks America has lost more than it’s gained through trade deals, so the North American Free Trade Agreement and softwood lumber pacts are threatened and the Trans-Pacific Partnership suddenly isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. He is likely to walk away from climate change agreements in which we are latently and expensively investing. Our biggest assets in our relationship with him seem to be his property assets here and in Toronto.
2) America has had its share of intolerant presidents, but there is nothing on the record to suggest a Trump White House has anything in its agenda to advance or achieve gender or racial equality, the most significant social and economic challenges still facing the country. In moving from a black president to one endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, in musing about the need to reverse Row vs. Wade, apprehension is well founded.
3) The precarious global economy is barely recovering from the financial crisis, and in the days ahead we will see if the markets consider Trump’s election an adverse event. They had better not, because there is not much room for central banks to stimulate.
4) The U.S. economy is itself overdue for a recession, given we have had seven years of slow but steady growth. Whether Trump could effectively address it is an open question.
5) The short term is going to shock the system because Trump’s team is thin and will not meet the test of the economy, the judiciary, the military or the executive branch. He ran almost as much against the Republicans as he did the Democrats, and like any outsider, he will need to find the right insider allies as he moves from an invader to an occupier.
6) The medium term is going to change the system because the Republicans now control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Soon, thanks to an unconscionable delay in an Obama nominee’s hearing, they will control the Supreme Court. The U.S. system of checks and balances will be unchecked and imbalanced. This won’t serve even the partisans.
7) The long term depends almost entirely on the short- and medium-term economic applications of his presidency. If he commits too ambitiously to his epic infrastructure ideas, if he throws his weight around and withers the independence of the Federal Reserve, we will enter a global recession.
8) There is an eerie live-and-let-live quality to what we’ve heard from the president-elect about the wider world he will soon help to lead. America’s importance as a stabilizing and imaginative force in the planet appears to be entering an era of relative indifference.
Trump mastered a method of layering on an aggrieved cohort of supporters without alienating the Republican base, and neither media nor pollsters detected it. They didn’t talk to the right people or ask the right questions in the right way. Both institutions are too inside their bubbles and will need to regain credibility by better reflecting – not accepting, just reflecting – what people think and what Trump’s harnessed discontent represents.
The stark shift in the political landscape opens the door to bad and good – a possible time of regression and stagnation, but perhaps an opportunity in two years for a congressional correction and in four years for a more distinctive progressive change agent. Mind you, for many gobsmacked last Tuesday, that might seem like an eternity.
Kirk LaPointe is Business in Vancouver’s vice-president of audience and business development.
