I Bet Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre Wishes He Had Never Adopted The “Canada First” Slogan

Another Elon Musk Endorsement Casualty

New polling shows that Americans take Trump’s most bombastic, insane ideas seriously— and that they overwhelmingly reject them. And that is especially true— more than for any of the others— taking over Canada. “Trump has said he would use ‘economic force’ to make Canada the 51st state of the U.S. and referred to former prime minister Justin Trudeau as ‘governor,’ before imposing 25 percent tariffs on cars, fuel and other goods from the country… 53% of the public thinks Trump is serious about trying to take control… Support for Trump’s ideas ranges from low to extremely low… Just over 2 in 10 Americans (22 percent) support the U.S. trying to take over Greenland, including 45 percent of Republicans. A similar 18 percent of U.S. adults support Trump serving a third term as president. While 38 percent of Republicans support this, 60 percent oppose it. Trying to take over Canada is the least popular proposal, with 13 percent of Americans supporting it and 86 percent opposed. Even among Republicans, 71 percent oppose trying to take control of Canada.”

No one is probably cursing Trump’s name more this week than Canada’s Conservatives. They were a sure bet for taking over the government from the unpopular Liberals… until Trump started running his mouth. From working his party into a 20 point polling lead, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre wound up narrowly losing his own seat in Ottawa, which he had held for two decades! Pollsters are saying that “Poilievre suffered for rhetoric too similar to Trump’s.” Liberal Bruce Fanjoy will now represent the Carleton riding in Parliament.

So do the Liberals really owe their victory to Trump? Omaha Republican Congressman Don Bacon sure things so. “The Liberals in Canada were losing big until our president kept mocking Canadians, our neighbors and close friends. He made Canadian Liberals great again.” How Trump Lost Canada is how Zack Beauchamp tackled the question, noting that a recent poll found that 61% of Canadians are boycotting American-made goods in response to Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats. “Trump,” he wrote, “has single-handedly created the greatest surge of nationalist anti-Americanism in Canada’s history as an independent country. And the Liberal Party, which campaigned as the party best positioned to fight Trump, just rode it to victory.” It wiped out the party that was flirting with a Canadian version of a MAGA image all year.

Had Trump never uttered the phrase “51st state,” he’d be getting a friend in Ottawa. Instead, he has Carney— a longtime critics of America’s global economic dominance who campaigned on the idea that “the old relationship we had with the United States…is over.”

Trump has, in short, not only caused trouble for himself— but for the US. By pointlessly antagonizing a critical ally, he is damaging the fundamental architecture of American hegemony. The United States does not set the terms of global politics alone; it created a system of global rule that depends critically on the enthusiastic support of democratic allies. If politicians in those allied states are winning elections by promising a break with the US, then the foundations of that system are starting to buckle.

“In the past, the popularity, or lack thereof, of the US president shaped how far countries would go to help the US— so the US won’t get much help in the near future,” says Steve Saideman, a professor of international relations at Carleton University in Ottawa. “How long this lasts is not clear, but this is cutting deeper than Bush in 2003 or Trump 1.0.”

…Poilievre, from the party’s right flank, represents the kind of ideological conservatives who may actually have positive feelings about Trump. Indeed, Poilievre’s style resembles Trump’s in a number of respects: He gives his opponents demeaning nicknames, inveighs against the “woke mob,” warns about a World Economic forum conspiracy against Canada, and brags about his “big beautiful bring it home tax cut.” Elon Musk endorsed him in January.

Poilievre’s campaign did not seem to understand their Trump problem— adopting “Canada First” as a campaign slogan in February, for example. Kory Teneycke, one of the party’s top strategists, publicly accused Poilievre and his team of committing “campaign malpractice at the highest level.”

…By threatening Canada’s economy, and even its very sovereignty, the second Trump administration has crossed a line. Canada can no longer assume that Washington has a baseline level of respect for Ottawa. It can’t even count on America as a friend in the short term. And worse, they don’t know when it will end: Even if you set aside Trump’s bluster about an illegal third term, there’s a real chance that the next Republican (say, JD Vance) would treat Canada the same way.

The threat to America here is not only that the Carney government does something painful in the short term, like counter-tariffs. It’s that his election on an anti-American platform is a sign that Canada as a country has lost faith in the US-led global system. If that’s correct, its leaders become more open to long-term changes to the global system— like moving away from the dollar as reserve currency— that it may otherwise have never contemplated.

In this, Canada isn’t alone. The upcoming Australian election has had a remarkably similar arc. The incumbent party, left-wing Labor, had been losing to the right-wing Liberal-National Coalition for much of the election. They started a comeback in late March, but only opened a clear and consistent lead after Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs. Australian analysts credit the Liberal rise to a backlash against Trump and politicians seen as similar in style.

Trump’s aggressive economic policy isn’t, as he claimed, making America great or respected again. Instead, it’s having the opposite effect: turning longtime allies into places where campaigning against American leadership is a winning strategy.

“Trump is risking the fundamental infrastructure of American economic (and political) influence,” Dan Nexon, a professor of international relations at Georgetown University, says.

So if we are indeed witnessing the beginning of the end of the American-led world order, the history books will likely record April 28, 2025, as a notable date— one where even America’s closest ally started eying the geopolitical exits.

On Tuesday, “Carney thanked Poilievre before turning a laser focus to Trump. ‘America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country,’ Carney said. ‘These are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never, ever happen. But we also must recognize the reality that our world has fundamentally changed,’ he said. Recognizing the polarized result, Carney called for ‘an end to the division and anger of the past.’ He said he would sit down with Trump to negotiate a future economic and security agreement as ‘two sovereign nations,’ and would confront the crisis ‘with overwhelming, positive force. We will fight back with everything we have to get the best deal for Canada,’ he said.”

It looks like The Liberals won 169 seats, just short of the 172 the need to form a majority government. The Conservatives won 144 seats, Bloc Québécois 22 seats, New Democrats 7 seats and The Greens just 1. Carney can easily form a majority with the New Democrats, a natural ally which worked with Trudeau’s government in exchange for advancing NDP priorities like dental care and pharmacare. The Bloc Québécois is also likely to be cooperative, although probably not in a formal sense.

I just want to add one think. Paul Krugman noted in his substack yesterday that “If Trump had merely made economic demands on our northern neighbor, Canada might have acquiesced, although it’s not clear what concessions it could have made. But by repeatedly insisting that Canada must become the 51st state, he made any hint of Trumpiness toxic in Canadian politics… The Canadian election, then, demonstrates why Trumpist trade policy, and foreign policy in general, is doomed to catastrophic failure. Trump isn’t trying to drive tough substantive bargains. Mainly, he seems to want to indulge in narcissism, demanding that other nations humiliate themselves so he can put on a display of dominance. And America doesn’t have remotely enough leverage, even against Canada, to make such demands. You could say that Trump is a reverse Godfather, making offers other countries can’t accept… Our northern neighbor is, along with Mexico, among the countries most at risk from Trump’s trade war. Canada does a lot of trade with the much larger U.S. economy. According to Statistics Canada, 2.6 million Canadians, 13 percent of the work force, are employed directly or indirectly producing goods exported to the United States. So U.S. tariffs will impose a huge shock on Canada’s economy. It's not clear how much Carney can or will do to mitigate that shock. But he has no alternative to going elbows up: There’s no way to satisfy Trump’s demands. And you do have to wonder whether Trump will fold once it becomes clear how badly his trade war is going.”

And Trump’s blatant election-morning endorsement of the Conservatives on his social media platform, failed dismally: