Month: December 2025

Let’s start with a few assumptions.

U.S. President Donald Trump has reached his political ceiling.

He will never again enjoy the high-water mark he hit on election night last year. What remains is a slow, steady leaking of his support — drips at first, then larger spills as the inevitable crises he provokes roll in.

Historically, polls have understated Trump’s support. This time, I believe they are closer to the mark — not because they’ve suddenly become more accurate, but because Trump finds himself in a position he has never managed to successfully navigate: owning a struggling economy.

And yet, he promised Americans the moon — a booming, cheaper, more prosperous future. That promise will go unfulfilled. And as every unpopular president eventually learns, the midterms are when voters stop listening to excuses and start demanding results.

In short, 2026 will be a very bad year for Donald Trump.

But he won’t go down without a fight.

It’s impossible to overstate how damaging it is for any U.S. administration when their party stands to lose both the House of Representatives and the Senate — an outcome that now seems more likely than not. It is tantamount to governing with both hands tied behind your back.

The president’s advisers understand the gravity of this situation. Trump’s chief of staff has already telegraphed their plan: instead of hiding an unpopular president, they intend to nationalize the midterms around him. He will campaign like it’s 2024 all over again.

Which brings us to what all of this means for Canada. In reality, there are only two options ahead.

Option one: Trump reverses course. He halts most tariffs, normalizes trade relations and frees American consumers from the self-inflicted price shocks. This would presumably help him politically.

We can dream.

Option two: He blames Canada. He doubles down and escalates tariffs.

I would bet the farm on option two.

Whether Trump likes it or not, the 2026 midterms will be a referendum on the state of the U.S. economy. And Trump’s core challenge is not the performance of the stock market. Wealthy Americans are doing just fine. His real vulnerability lies with low- and middle-income households — the voters who decide elections and who feel the pain of every grocery bill.

Those Americans don’t care if Nvidia posts a record quarter. Their lives are getting more expensive by the day.

And far from changing his spots, admitting that tariffs have helped create this affordability crisis, Trump — especially on the campaign trail — is likely to lean even harder into the narrative that has always underpinned his politics: that America is the victim, that someone else is taking advantage of them.

In that narrative, Canada will be in the crosshairs.

And we will be in the crosshairs because of who we are.

No matter how warmly Trump may speak about our prime minister, Canada remains fundamentally out of step with the administration’s ideological world view. As JD Vance’s social-media feed reminds us regularly, Canada is held up as the textbook example of liberal excess — a country too socially progressive and too immigration friendly.

But the clearest signal of this shift is found in the administration’s update to America’s national security strategy. I will spare readers the tedium, but the thrust is unmistakable: nations that once counted as America’s closest friends are now cast as potential adversaries. Old alliances are disposable.

And in this world view, Canada becomes something between a bargaining chip and a vassal state.

Which only serves to underline the point: the politics of grievance fuel the politics of tariffs. And Canada is a convenient target. That vulnerability will only grow as the 2026 midterms approach.

A president campaigning on grievance, tariffs, and “America First” will see CUSMA not as a stabilizing framework but as yet another arena to extract concessions and manufacture conflict.

If there is a silver lining, it is this: should Republicans face significant losses in the midterms, the political logic of tariffs will shift. As the party turns toward the 2028 presidential race, there will be enormous pressure on its nominee to campaign on an economy that is stronger, cheaper and growing — a difficult proposition with self-inflicted tariffs still in place.

A sliver of hope, to be sure. But in a Trump-dominated environment, even a sliver is worth something.

“This is Canada working. This is co-operative federalism.”

That is how Prime Minister Mark Carney framed the recent memorandum of understanding between Ottawa and Alberta to build a pipeline to Canada’s west coast.

Credit where credit is due: it’s a sharp line.

But it didn’t take long for rhetoric to collide with reality.

Just hours after Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith were smiling for cameras in downtown Calgary, B.C. Premier David Eby denounced the deal, insisting his government could not support any arrangement that revives tanker traffic on the province’s coastline. He went further, labelling the pipeline project an “energy vampire” that would drain federal, Indigenous, and provincial resources.

What our optimistic prime minister calls “co-operative federalism” might, in practice, be better described as “waterbed federalism”: push down to accommodate one province and righteous anger rises up elsewhere. Sometimes in the form of a premier. Sometimes from within your own caucus.

Maddening as it is, this is the Canada we have.

And while critics may wish to pretend otherwise, no one in the Carney government is under any illusion about this reality and the risks it presents. They are simply choosing to engage with them anyway.

Because the bet Carney is making is straightforward: that he can outmuscle the opponents of this project with the administrative force of the new Major Projects Office, the regulatory and convening tools of the federal government, and the broad public support — across parties and regions — that wants this built.

But make no mistake: it is still a bet. A big one.

And his most important instrument in executing it isn’t some new legal tool — rather, it’s a new political language. Not the virtues-forward moralism of the Trudeau years, but a more pragmatic, materially focused economic nationalism.

Which brings us to the larger picture.

This pipeline is not just about soothing Alberta. It is about diversifying our export markets, loosening our dependence on the United States, and opening pathways to new partners.

That ambition requires a shift from “values-based” trade-offs to economically grounded ones — both at home and abroad.

Of all the globe-trotting Carney has done in his time as prime minister, nothing has been as concrete or consequential as the agreement he signed with the United Arab Emirates earlier this month. Under that deal, Canada and the UAE will jointly invest more than $1 billion to expand critical mineral processing here at home. More remarkably still, the UAE has pledged up to $70 billion in investment across Canada’s economy.

That is genuine economic statecraft. Not just foreign financing, but foreign partners sitting at the table, sharing risk, supply-chain exposure, and industrial ambition.

Of course, such deals come with complications. Carney was asked about reports the UAE is fuelling ethnic violence in Sudan, a grim and legitimate concern.

But if Canada wants the massive international capital required to build the infrastructure of our future, we must accept an uncomfortable truth: new partners do not come without new complexities.

This is part of a broader pivot, not only away from American dependence, but toward a more hard-headed, globally competitive posture.

For a man who literally wrote a book about values, this shift might seem jarring to some. Even politically hazardous.

They could not be more wrong.

In fact, any opportunity that allows Mark Carney to differentiate himself from Justin Trudeau is a political gift. Every Trudeau-era cabinet minister who steps aside, every change in message, tone, or emphasis, every move away from moralistic internationalism toward economic pragmatism — signals to voters: this is not the same Liberal party.

Carney is consolidating his power and reshaping the party in his own image.

That is not a vulnerability. Most parties struggle for years to rid themselves of the lingering scent of a former leader. Carney is doing it with purpose and speed.

And that matters.

Because the prime minister’s entire project — the pipeline, the global investment strategy, the shift away from the Trudeau brand — will depend on whether Canadians see not continuity, but reinvention, a government defined not by moral posture, but by a commitment to material progress.

Canada is the perfect target for Trump’s midterm survival strategy

Mark Carney’s pipeline marks a shift from values-based trade-offs to economically grounded ones