Justin Trudeau achieved the seemingly impossible during his in-and-out trip to the White House on Monday: he managed to make Donald Trump boring.
And that, for Trudeau and his government, was a tremendous win.
Against the backdrop of a White House that is by all indications in chaos, alongside a president inclined to go off the rails as often as a rickety streetcar, the prime minister kept his first face-to-face meeting relentlessly focused on the traditional tedious bromides of U.S.-Canadian relations.
There was no mistaking the distinct absence of any personal warmth between the two men. It was all correct, but Trump looked like he could hardly wait for the encounter to end.
Nonetheless, their bland statements reinforced messages that the Canadian government was determined to have publicly endorsed by this new and profoundly unpredictable administration in Washington.
Trump proclaimed that “America is deeply fortunate to have a neighbour like Canada.” He acknowledged the “profound shared interests” of Canada and the United States, the fact that the two economies are deeply integrated, and that millions of good middle-class American jobs (the type the president campaigned to protect) depend on trade with Canada. He recognized the importance of making sure the border doesn’t become a hindrance to expanding trade and creating jobs, despite U.S. paranoia about security.
In other words, he acknowledged that putting “America First,” the prime directive of his administration, should not mean kicking Canada to the curb. On the contrary, U.S. self-interest requires that the cross-border relationship be protected and even strengthened.
That’s the key message that Canadian governments of all stripes have worked to get across to U.S. administrations of all types for many decades. Simply getting Trump to buy into the basic proposition was a win.
And Trump went a bit further, recognizing that the U.S. already has a “very outstanding” trade relationship with Canada and he’s interested only in “tweaking” it. Who knows what that means exactly for any looming renegotiation of NAFTA, which Trump famously denounced as “the worst trade deal ever”? But the tone is about as good as Canada could expect at this point. It looks very much as though Hurricane Donald will be headed south toward Mexico, not north toward us.
For Canadians eager to see Trudeau publicly distance himself from Trump’s retrograde policies, the prime minister walked the line about as well as anyone could ask.
Asked about the two countries’ starkly different approaches to refugees and immigrants, he told a questioner that “the last thing Canadians expect is for me to come down and lecture another country on how they choose to govern themselves.” But he quickly followed that by saying Canada will continue to be true to its own values and “be a positive example in the world.”
Message sent – with no reason for the U.S. side to take offence.
Trudeau’s team managed a minor coup by arranging for the two leaders to preside over a roundtable of senior women in business, including Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
The U.S.-Canada “council” they announced for advancing women in business will quite likely come to nothing. But just having the president and prime minister take part in a session devoted to promoting women sent a positive message about Trudeau’s priorities. It also did Trump a favour, giving him an opportunity to do a little fence-mending with the many women he alienated during the presidential campaign.
One good meeting does not make for a successful relationship. But it’s also true that a really bad first meeting could have made it a lot harder to get things on the right track with the new players in Washington.
Given how volatile Trump has shown he can be, that was always a possibility. So Trudeau deserves a pat on the back for getting out of town without leaving any obvious broken china or bad feelings behind him. In the new Washington, that counts as a victory.
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