When the house next door gets a new occupant, we tend to wonder what effect it might have on us. Will there be loud parties late into the night? Or will we enjoy the same sort of quiet solitude we took for granted when the previous residents lived there for years?
And if things don’t go as well as we hope, how will we deal with it? Change makes us look inward, and Canadians are no doubt doing that right now.
American life under a Trump presidency will be much like it was from 2016-2020, only potentially on steroids. With the U.S. House of Representatives still a toss-up between the Democrats and Republicans, it remains to be seen how far the newly elected president will be able to go with his vision.
The effect on the seed industry will also be much like it was during Trump’s first term. We can likely expect tariffs, and trade wars, and all that good stuff. But agriculture is resilient, and will no doubt adapt to what might be coming.
The bigger question is what this will mean in terms of the political mood in Canada. With Canadians expecting to go to an election any time between now and October 2025, will the ushering in of a new Trump administration alter the political landscape in Canada, and if so, how?
It could go any number of ways.
Conservatives in Canada could be emboldened by the Trump win, feeling even more wind in their sails and securing and even stronger victory for the party now led by Pierre Poilievre.
Or could the Trump victory create a sense of urgency among some Canadians that now is the not the time for a Conservative government in Canada? Do we want Trump in office down south and a Conservative prime minister here at home, who himself has been known to use a few Trump-style rhetorical tactics to court voters?
Or — depending on how loud our new neighbour gets — could the Trump win cause a redefining of conservatism in Canada? Ask any random person on the street what defines a Canadian, and just about the only thing anyone will agree on is that we are NOT Americans, whatever that means. We pride ourselves on being different from our neighbours to the south. Being “different” means a million different things to a million different people, of course, but it’s always united us a country.
Will Poilievre continue to use some of the Trump-style rhetoric he has employed rather successfully these past number of months? Or will he tone it down and try to set himself apart from the man who lives in the White House?
When somebody new moves in next door, life is usually never as bad as we often worry about. The loud parties rarely materialize, and life ends up going on pretty much the same as it always did. Things might be a bit different, but we usually end up just fine. Sometimes we might even like the new people better than the old ones.
That probably won’t be the case this time out. Trump is not a quiet neighbour, and he’s the sort of person who transcends the concept of likability. Do even his biggest supporters “like” him? Or do they simply support him because they feel he delivers? Relationships, even healthy ones, can be and often are purely transactional. Our economic system is based around the idea of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”. It’s Business 101.
Of course, Trump has made clear that the only back he is interested in having scratched is his own. And it’s those types of scratching sessions that become problematic. For business to work, both parties must be willing to engage in a mutually beneficial transaction, and that’s a concept that doesn’t come easy to Trump. And it’s something that will have a big effect on both our industry and our country as we move ahead into an election of our own.
The question now is what kind of neighbour we want to be, not only to America but to the rest of the world.
