It happened in the blink of an eye.
Seemingly overnight, the rules of the game — how decisions are reached at the heart of the American government — changed.
And Canada has been caught clinging to the old playbook.
During this past week’s inauguration ceremony, the evidence of this development was everywhere.
The foreground offered the official narrative: there, underneath the Capitol dome, stood Donald Trump to receive his oath of office and deliver his fiery vision for America.
But the background told the deeper story — one that testifies to the new power paradigm in Washington, DC. Among the usual suspects — the first and second families, former presidents and vice-presidents, the Supreme Court — stood Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Tim Cook, in better seats, more visible, more prominent, than Trump’s own cabinet members.
You don’t need to be an art critic to decipher this tableau. Power is proximity to power. To put an even finer point on it, the New York Times reported last weekend that there are not enough fancy homes left to accommodate the influx of those vying for influence!
To date, in readying ourselves to prosecute an economic war with our Southern neighbours, our fatal instinct has been to reach for the shelf and blow dust off the trusty, old playbook.
Page 1: Impose retaliatory tariffs on high-profile U.S. goods. Pick industries that will sting politically.
Page 2: Mobilize cross-border alliances, targeting politicians in states and industries that are reliant on Canadian trade.
Page 3 — we won’t make it.
Because if our grand strategy is to target not the people on stage — but those in the seventh row, beside Trump’s estranged third cousins, guess what?
It won’t work.
As much as it might be hard to hear for the bureaucrats who’ve spent years figuring out how to screw Kentucky’s bourbon industry, we need a new approach. And it needs to target those who Trump listens to above all others.
We have to understand that the age of the oligarch has arrived in Washington.
Because while these oligarchs — Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and others — may compete amongst themselves, the fact is they have far surpassed the traditional power brokers: senators, members of congress, lobbyists, the list goes on. (And, don’t forget, it’s these usual suspects who, during the first Trump administration, proudly proclaimed that they could “control him,” and “rein him in.” I’ll let the success of that effort speak for itself.)
The reality is this: Trump listens to, favours, this cadre of unbelievably rich tech oligarchs, not only because they collectively represent more wealth than most nation states, or because he views them as part of his billionaire peer group, but — most importantly — because of what they control: the attention economy. The platforms of discourse. The hardware we use to connect to them. Sometimes both.
From Twitter (now X, under Elon Musk) to Meta’s platforms, their influence in the digital space translates into political capital that traditional power brokers simply can’t match.
I’m reminded of what a former Biden staffer said after Harris’s disastrous defeat, “How do you spend $1 billion and not win? What the f***?”
The question is rhetorical, but I’ll give it a shot.
In today’s politics, the most valuable currency isn’t dollars — it’s attention. And Trump carried a decisive advantage into this contest, with X and other platforms leaning heavily in his favour.
Disturbingly autocratic as this, we don’t have the luxury of debating what this means for the future of politics or dwelling on the contradictions of a movement claiming to champion the working class while embracing impossibly wealthy tech magnates.
At this moment, the only thing that matters is recognizing the shift and adapting to it.
Should we match Trump’s tariffs dollar for dollar? Absolutely.
But if our strategy begins and ends with traditional tools like retaliatory tariffs and old-fashioned diplomacy, we’re doomed.
If we’re relying on a Republican Senator to burst into the Oval Office to dissuade Trump because the orange juice lobby is upset, we’re dreaming.
As Don Leniham recently put it, “America can compensate Iowa farmers or Michigan factory workers far longer than Canada can compensate Alberta’s oil industry or Ontario autoworkers.”
However, if we develop a strategy that reaches and persuades the people Trump listens to first, then we stand a fighting chance. And in a new game, with a new playbook, against a stronger opponent, that’s all we can ask for.
