The 2024 American Presidential Election: The Stakes for Canada

After having addressed the federal cabinet at its retreat in late August, Kristin Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, informed reporters that Canadians should not be worried about the result of the upcoming US election. “I don’t think,” she affirmed, “we have any reason to be concerned under, to be frank, either administration.” Hillman is an expert diplomat and her assurance was very diplomatic. But in all frankness, there is much at stake for Canada in the outcome of the election and in whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins the presidency. And while Ambassador Hillman has emphasized that both Republicans and Democrats share the same goals “in common with us: economic growth, jobs, national security and energy security”, 

Trade is very much Ambassador Hillman’s area of focus, and rightly so given the economic reality for Canada of its reliance on American trade and investment. That is why Hillman has done incredible work in traversing the US as a central part of a Team Canada campaign to promote the facts of Canada-US interdependence to anyone who will listen. This initiative is vital, because whichever candidate wins, Canada is set to deal with a protectionist administration as well as Congress.

Economically, what can be expected from a Harris administration is a continuation of the economic policies of the Biden White House, which has been no stranger to utilizing protectionist measures that have hurt Canadian trade. Given her youth in Montreal, presumably Harris has fond views of Canada as do most Americans. What’s likely, is that Canadian diplomats are preparing to orchestrate an early visit north should she win, a trip that presidents typically take, and one that would provide a good opportunity to remind Harris of the close ties between both countries and the mutual damage that a trade dispute will cause. 

A wrinkle, however, is that Harris was one of a handful of Democratic senators to oppose the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). One assumes that this vote had less to do with Canada than with Mexico, long a concern for American protectionists and Democrats eager to promote labour rights and environmental standards. With the six-year review of CUSMA approaching in 2026, a President Harris could drive a hard bargain in seeing the agreement renewed.

As for Trump, over the course of the election campaign he has vowed variously to implement tariffs of 10 or 20 percent on all goods coming into the US, and even to replace income taxes with tariffs as the main source of federal revenue. As he recently put it, “tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented.” The hope in Ottawa, and no doubt in corporate boardrooms, is that CUSMA will keep Canada safe from these tariffs. But with Trump, a serial liar with a zero-sum outlook, there are no guarantees.

Indeed, during his administration Trump was not averse to circumventing NAFTA by declaring Canada a national security threat in order to slap tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum. Hence a CBC report in July that Canadian officials have already warned the Trump campaign to expect retaliation should Canada not be exempted from the Republican’s threatened tariffs. As for CUSMA, since he brokered the deal, its likely Trump is willing to see it preserved. Or maybe not. What Trump has vowed is to renegotiate CUSMA, noting menacingly, “Oh, I’m going to have a lot of fun.” Meanwhile, his advisors have threatened to use tariffs to force NATO allies to boost their defence spending to 3% of GDP, a worrisome development for Canada, which has failed to reach even NATO’s 2% target. 

Any imposition of tariffs on Canada by the Americans poses grave problems, as individual Canadians and Canadian businesses can ill-afford a trade war with Canada’s largest customer. The uncertainty about Trump’s tariff threats let alone what across the board tariffs would do to the global economy are hardly conducive to long-term business strategizing.

The Team Canada initiative is meant to provide an end-run around such protectionism. Yet Congressional Republicans’ slavishness to Trump and the growing popularity of protectionism within both political parties could blunt the effectiveness of Canadian lobbying. Furthermore, Trump’s and his team’s promises to fire huge swathes of the professional civil service and appoint only loyalists means that the US government would be a very different institution than what Canadian diplomats are used to dealing with. 

A Trump White House would be different, too, even from the first administration: there will no establishment Republicans – the so-called adults in the room – tempering the president’s anger. Indeed, MAGA Republicans are the new party establishment. Ambassador Hillman has emphasized a belief that there is no “anti-Canadian sentiment within the Republican Party.” That is true perhaps (certainly, there is stark antipathy toward Justin Trudeau), but the MAGA movement is staunchly nationalist, and America First means putting Canada second – or worse.

Trade is not the only pressing issue, even if it is the major focus of current Canadian diplomatic efforts. The border is important, too. Whether Trump or Harris wins, the border will remain open to tourists and transport trucks, even as some figures in Trump’s orbit have called for more policing of the 49^th parallel. Vice President Harris has indicated that she will also pursue a tougher border policy, perhaps reviving the immigration bill from earlier this year that had bipartisan support until Trump browbeat Republicans into killing it to boost his electoral prospects. 

Whatever Harris seems willing to sanction in terms of hiring additional border agents or even increasing detention of illegal migrants will pale in comparison to what Trump has promised. Vowing to utilize the full weight of US law enforcement and even the military, the Republican candidate has called for a “bloody” crackdown that will involve the rounding up and deportation of millions of illegal immigrants across the US. Canada can expect that mass deportations will produce a flood of migrants north. With immigration already a pressing economic, political, and social issue in Canada and with the country’s refugee system already at a breaking point, the impact of such a huge number of refugees is not hard to imagine. One Roxham Road proved problematic enough to deal with, but what about a dozen? A hundred?

More broadly, the election appears to be a pivot point for US engagement with the world. The Trudeau government has made much of the rules-based international order and the need to defend it. That order is one backed by the US, and like the America Firsters of the 1940s, Trump seems set on isolating America and placating autocratic powers intent on overturning the international status quo. “Russia, China, various places – I don’t know that they’re enemies,” Trump has stated. “I think we’ll get along great with Russia. I want to get Russia to settle up with Ukraine.” 

Overwhelmingly, analysts are agreed that settling the Russia-Ukraine war would involve Trump selling out Kyiv to Vladimir Putin, whom Trump clearly admires deeply. Trump’s admiration for autocrats and loathing of fellow democratic leaders was a notable feature of his time in office, and has showed no signs of dissipating. The abandonment of Ukraine, Taiwan, South Korea, and other democratic governments seems certain. 

One potential result of an American failure to meet security commitments, is an explosion in nuclear proliferation, a terrifying development. Furthermore, Trump already attempted to withdraw the US from NATO, and could do so again. That would likely mean the end of the alliance, a disastrous result for Canada, which has treated NATO as a cornerstone of its foreign and defence policy since 1949. Not only did the alliance serve to promote stability in Europe and forfend against Russian aggression, but it secured an American commitment to the security of other democracies and also meant that Canada, living next to the behemoth to the south, could balance its reliance on Washington.

Beyond ceding the field to adversarial powers hostile to liberal democracy, American retrenchment would accelerate the current trend toward global stratification. In a world that breaks up into regional blocs or spheres of influence that revolve around certain great powers, the dictates of geography mean that Canada will find itself increasingly isolated alongside its gigantic neighbour. Canada is ill-prepared to face this stark reality. Successive Canadian governments bear some blame for this situation, though who could have predicted that an American leader would willingly and consistently undermine US leadership and hegemony? 

But it is the Trudeau government that has been in power for nearly a decade, that has been emphasizing the need to defend the rules-based order, yet has displayed a marked unwillingness to then follow through, neglecting defence spending, handling foreign affairs in a sclerotic manner, and slow-walking efforts to diversify international links in the Indo-Pacific region, Africa, and elsewhere. At a conference in 2018, historian Margaret Macmillan likened Canadians to Hobbits feasting in the Shire as the rest of Middle Earth burns around them. Little has changed.

A saving grace for Canada is the expectation that a President Harris will remain committed to NATO, to the Ukrainian cause, and to defending liberal democracy abroad. Yet as Kim Richard Nossal documented in his recent book Canada Alone, long-term trends speak to a vital need for Canadians to reengage in the world by rethinking and revamping our foreign, defence, and trade policies. A Harris win will buy us some time to do so without the risk of facing the cudgel of tariffs over defence spending in particular. But Americans of all political stripes have been decrying Canada’s inattention both to its military and to pressing international issues. Whoever wins, there will be more pressure on Canada to rearm itself and take on more global commitments – the difference is that Republicans will be more forceful about it.

Finally, politically and culturally, the election will have spillover effects in Canada. Whatever else the election results will mean for progressism, liberalism, and conservatism, it will matter whether or not the new president is a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, and serial liar, who, for the first time since the US Civil War, upset the peaceful transfer of power by attempting a coup and then, when it failed, by refusing to attend his opponent’s inauguration. Pierre Trudeau’s dictum that Canadians were “sleeping with an elephant” and were “affected by every twitch and grunt” is as true today as it was fifty-five years ago.