Two Lessons From Canada

The victory by the Liberal Party in the Canadian parliamentary elections was as unlikely as it was pivotal. Little more than three short months ago, Liberals trailed by as much as twenty points in the polls, Justin Trudeau was on the verge of being tarred and feathered, the economy was in a shambles, and the thirst for a return to conservative rule was as pervasive as Tim Horton’s doughnuts.

Yet the Conservatives squandered that twenty-point advantage and were routed in the election. Conservatives don’t blow twenty-point leads—only American Democrats do that. (Yes, the Conservatives gained twenty seats, but they started the night fifty short, so these gains paled for a party expected to gain sixty or seventy. In addition, the leader of the Conservatives, Pierre Poilievre, lost in his own district, a seat he had held for two decades.)

The Liberal win cannot be explained by a sudden change in Canada’s fortunes. Although Trudeau was replaced by central banker Mark Carney, the economy is still in a shambles, even worse than before, due to Donald Trump’s tariff war. The actual reason for the Liberals’ victory, one which Carney was happy to share…Liberally…with his fellow Canadians, and the world, was…

Donald. Trump.

To say Trump could not have played the Canada card worse is an understatement. From his ridiculous tariff initiative supposedly based on fentanyl smuggling, to his continued insistence that Canada give up its sovereignty, to his late attempt to boost the Conservatives by saying he would rather work with the Liberals, Trump singlehandedly prompted Canadians to abandon their long-held belief that Conservatives were better stewards of the economy and return to office a party that seemed to have lost all credibility. Canadians, Trump was surprised to learn, are patriotic. They are proud of their culture, their history, and their identity. They like being Canadian. Giving that up to be Donald Trump’s vassal 51st state did not have the allure Trump assumed it would. (To be clear, the Conservatives also ran on an anti-Trump platform, but no one really believed they meant it.)

There are two key strategic implications from the Canadian election, one obvious, one less so.

The obvious one is the potential of a ripple effect, with would-be Trumps in other nations realizing that running on the MAGA brand might not yield the results they seek. The far-right was already under pressure in Europe, with both Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz beating back challenges and Giorgia Meloni significantly moderating Italy’s conservative tilt and agreeing with virtually every other European leader save Viktor Orban that Trump’s dictates needed to be resisted. They, like Carney, have emphasized the need to move away from dependence on the United States, both militarily and economically.

Trumpism has had more success in Latin America, particularly in Argentina and El Salvador, but in the biggest and most important nation in that region, Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro was turned out of office and was trying to stay out of jail for attempting a coup when he was felled by a mysterious intestinal ailment that landed him in the hospital instead.

With Canada as a precedent, extremely poor poll numbers here, and many congressional Republicans ducking around corners to avoid angry constituents, the Trump political brand threatens to become as appealing as Trump University or Trump steaks. That does not doom conservatism, of course, but it will surely moderate it.

It is the second strategic implication, however, that is the more significant.

Trump prides himself on being the ultimate dealmaker, a virtuoso of hardball negotiations. In the vein of being able to get anybody to do anything, he recently bragged that he runs “the country and the world.”

But what are deals and negotiations, but a series of decisions? Very much like, say, poker, deals are generally made in a fluid atmosphere where the landscape is constantly changing and a player must decide how to react to each change. Every hand is different, requiring new choices—call, raise, pass, fold—yet an overall approach is necessary to keep one’s opponents off-balance. Consistency is the enemy. A player who never, ever bluffs, for example, will chase out the competition with each high bet, or leave him or herself vulnerable to a made hand across the table. Far better to bluff every so often and make certain one’s opponents know it.

And so, poker and dealmaking are most similar in that they are in essence person-to-person encounters, with the more deft player winning a majority of the time, often without holding the best hand. And to be the more deft player means being the superior decision-maker, knowing when and how to play each opponent.

For all the hoopla, Trump rarely seems to display those skills. When he is criticized for being mindlessly chaotic, supporters flock to his defense by insisting that this is merely part of that overall strategy, keeping his opponents off-balance and therefore unable to respond effectively. Then, they nod sagely, when the time is right, Trump will pounce.

But is that really what is going on?

Setting aside his less than sterling business record, Trump’s decision-making since becoming president has been somewhere between poor and abysmal. He bungled Canada, misplayed the tariffs, turned allies into adversaries, pushed the economy towards the precipice, allowed Elon Musk to wield a machete to popular federal programs, and appears to have grievously weakened the nation he promised to Make Great Again.

If Trump is indeed a poor rather than brilliant decision-maker, the question for adversaries both in the United States and around the world, particularly Xi Jinping, is how to most effectively deal with him.

The answer seems simple. If confronted with an opponent who will inevitably make bad decisions…keep him or her making decisions. In this case, it is not Trump keeping opponents off-balance but rather he himself being off-balance. His on-again-off-again policy initiatives are not adroit negotiations but the inability to grasp the import of his words and deeds, what, again in poker, is called “having a feel for the table.”

As of yet, except for Xi—who is proving himself far smarter than he is generally given credit for—most world leaders have not yet employed Trump’s approach against Trump, but some, like Macron and Carney, seem to be catching on.

If that happens, the already precarious position into which Trump has thrust the nation will get a lot worse.