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Can Donald Trump rescue Trudeau?
The struggling government of Justin Trudeau tried Tuesday to cast itself as the group to handle the vital relationship with the United States — announcing a "Team Canada engagement strategy” at the end of a cabinet retreat — but observers are dubious about the government’s ability to pivot its way out of trouble by invoking the specter of Donald Trump.
Trudeau, who has been trailing his Conservative rival Pierre Poilievre in the polls by double digits since August, reminded voters that his government did a good job salvaging the trade relationship the last time Trump was in the White House, when Trump threatened to tear up NAFTA, and Trudeau managed to save the furniture and negotiate USMCA.
“We made it through the challenges represented by the Trump administration seven years ago, for four years, where we put forward the fact that Canada and the US do best when we do it together,” he said. “Obviously, Mr. Trump represents a certain amount of unpredictability.”
As they did last time, the Liberals are putting together a new Team Canada — drawing on representatives of other levels of government, business, labor, and academia. The team will be led by Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, International Trade Minister Mary Ng, and Kirsten Hillman, Canada's ambassador to the U.S., who gave a presentation at the cabinet retreat.
Who best to handle Trump?
This is a good move, says Christopher Sands, director of the Wilson Center’s Canada Institute. “Team Canada works when it puts Canadians on a focused, common message as was the case during the USMCA negotiations. Champagne, Ng, and Hillman are a good group to have as the face of the effort.”
But the government should be thinking about practical and serious steps to improve the relationship. “If Canada has no plan to increase defense spending, support the EV transition, export food and natural gas to allies in Asia and Europe, then all the feel-good rhetoric Canada can muster won't be enough,” says Sands.
Trudeau’s team signaled at the summit that the Liberals will try to connect Poilievre to Trump in the minds of voters, and get them thinking about who would be better off dealing with Trump.
It is not clear to Sands that this issue will give Trudeau the political boost he is looking for. Trump, after all, did not get along with Trudeau. “All that water under the bridge is going to be clouding Trudeau's relationship with Trump if he gets elected.”
When Canada hosts the G7 in 2025, would it really be good to have a replay of the 2018 G7 meeting in rural Quebec, which ended with Trump denouncing Trudeau from Air Force One as he left for North Korea?
“If it's Trudeau hosting Trump back for a second time, I just couldn't imagine what the sherpa will have to go through to be preparing that one,” says Sands.
Liberals look desperate
Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group's Global Macro-Geopolitics practice, doesn’t think this will work: “It does suggest that the government is somewhat desperate,” he says. Conservatives can argue that since Trump and Trudeau don’t get on, they might be better placed to manage the relationship, and what if Trump isn’t elected? “If Biden wins, that argument is dead.”
And Biden has better electoral prospects than Trudeau, according to pollster David Coletto, who concluded this week that Trudeau has little chance of winning another election. Trudeau seems out of touch with the top-of-mind concern of Canadian voters: the high cost of living. His firm, Abacus Data, recently found that the rising cost of fuel and food is the most important issue for three out of four Canadians — an unusually dominant concern.
Biden looks better
The bad news for Trudeau is that only one in four Canadians believe he “understands what life is like for people like you,” while two in four believe Poilievre does.
Inflation is brutal for incumbent governments — in the United Kingdom, United States and France the leaders are all facing stiff headwinds — but Coletto thinks Trudeau’s brand leaves him ill-suited to respond to a public dealing with scarcity.
Biden, on the other hand, could still pull off a win. “Biden is, I still think, better than 50-50. The odds are still in his favor, although not greatly. I think Trudeau has got a 10% chance of winning the next election.” Polling agrees. The horse race numbers for Trump-Biden show a tight race, while Trudeau has been far behind of his opponent for six months.
On Wednesday, a backbench MP in Trudeau’s party called for a leadership review, saying “there’s almost a hatred out there right now for [him].”
Unlike Trudeau, Biden has put an economic plan at the heart of his presidency, and the economy may be turning around. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 both hit record highs on Monday, and consumer confidence reached its highest point since 1991. Economists who study the relationship between the economy and politics think the signs augur well for Biden.
Trudeau does not look poised to benefit in the same way, says Coletto.
“At some point voters just say, ‘I'm done with you.’”
The identity politics trap
From race to gender to profession to nationality, we define who we are in a million different ways. Many people feel strongly about those identities; they are a fundamental part of how we see the world, find community, and relate to each other. But despite good intentions on the progressive left, at what point does focusing on what makes us different from each other hurt our society more than it helps? When does a healthy appreciation for culture and heritage stifle discourse and deny mutual understanding?
On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, political scientist and author Yascha Mounk weighs in on identity, politics, and how those two combine to create the complicated, contentious idea of “identity politics.” Mounk’s latest book, “The Identity Trap,” explores the origins and consequences of so-called “wokeness” and argues that a counter-productive obsession with group identity has gained outsize influence over mainstream institutions.
"I think the important thing is not to build a culture in which we are forced to double down on narrow identities," Mounk tells Bremmer, "in which we cease to build the broader identities, like ones as Americans, but allow us to sustain solidarity with people who are very different from us."
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
Ian Explains: Will voters care about "anti-woke" politics in 2024?
What happened to the war on wokeness?
For the past few years, the battle against the “woke mind virus” has dominated Fox News’ nightly coverage, but lately, Fox has led with issues like immigration and inflation. Self-styled “anti-woke” 2024 GOP primary candidates Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy are already out of the race, and anti-woke crusader Ron DeSantis’ poll numbers fell by 20 points in the last year.
Does this mean conservatives no longer care about fighting the “woke mob”? Not exactly. Landmark SCOTUS rulings striking down things like abortion and affirmative action and upholding religious and gun rights have signaled to voters that progressive policies have successfully been dismantled, so there’s less urgency from the right.
But an anti-woke worldview is still very much a part of conservative identity. Just look at the backlash, especially on the right, to last month’s Congressional hearing about anti-semitism on university campuses, which quickly forced the presidents of Harvard and UPenn to resign. Republicans may no longer identify as anti-woke, but anti-woke by any other name is still the heart of conservative values.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
Young, Angry, and Trumpy
Happy Top Risk Thursday, where we and our partner company Eurasia Group dive into the much-anticipated forecast of the biggest threats we all face this year. You can download the full report here and let us know if you agree or not (or if you now need a drink).
But let’s start with the Top Risk of the year, the US vs. itself. There was a small skirmish last night in the B-league, silver-medal debate between Republican candidates Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis on CNN that was high on personal insult and low on political consequence. Meanwhile on Fox … he was back for Season 2! Donald Trump held a live town hall, ignoring the other candidates who stand little chance against him. It is Trump’s show now, and Fox is back on board. Here we go!
The Iowa caucus on Jan. 15 formally lights the election fuse on what could be the US electoral version of the film “Oppenheimer.” Bidenheimer? Trumpenheimer? Pick your potential destroyer of worlds, as per your partisan pallor. The rest of the globe is watching because what happens in the US impacts everything from trade to conflicts.
The US is at its most divisive point in generations, but the real story might be, well, generational.
GZERO Media has exclusive access to new polling from Abacus Data, which asked Canadians about the 2024 US presidential election, and the results are telling. Who wants Donald Trump to win? Apparently, young people do.
Overall, 34% of Canadians want Trump to win, and 66% want Biden, which is not a shocker. Neither is the party line breakdown. Preferences for Trump vs. Biden by political choice in Canada are as follows:
Conservatives: Trump 57%, Biden 43%
Liberals: Biden 86%, Trump 14%
New Democrats: Biden 83%, Trump 17%
But check out the breakdown by age: Canadians under 45 are much more likely to prefer Trump to Biden than those over the age of 45. Here’s how it breaks down:
Ages 18-29: 40% want Trump
Ages 30-44: 41% want Trump
45-59: 34% want Trump
60+: Only 23% want Trump
More than any other demographic, young people really want Trump to win. "The strength of Trump in Canada, especially among younger Canadians, reflects a shift in voting behavior and preferences among younger people as they react to a world they feel is deeply broken,” David Coletto, president of Abacus Data, told me (see his Substack here). “In Canada, 49% of men under 45 would prefer to see Trump win the presidency. But even one in three younger women would prefer Trump.”
By the way, this also reflects polling done in the US. A new Gallup survey shows that 42% of Americans between ages 18 and 34 are Trump supporters, and 44% of those aged 35-54 also favor the former president. Biden is losing support among young people and, interestingly, with people of color.
This upends all sorts of assumptions about how younger people vote and how Biden’s economic and social record is not resonating. In the Age vs Rage election, Rage is winning so far, and it’s starting to steal the younger demographic. It also likely reflects where younger people get their information, like TikTok, which recycles a lot of pissed-off voices shouting about why everything sucks (despite many facts to the contrary) and turns it into news.
What does this mean for elections outside of the United States? The conventional wisdom is that Trump might hurt the chances of other conservative or right-wing parties and boost the Left’s prospects, but that might not be the case. “For politicians in Canada who think they will be able to use the US election to their own political advantage – like the Liberals – these results suggest that may not be possible,” Coletto says.
This is consequential. We’ve seen the same story in polling around Israel and Hamas, where older people support Israel’s fight against Hamas, which is recognized as a terrorist group by both the US and Canadian governments. But many younger people feel very differently about the situation, and their support for the Hamas-led fight in Gaza is revealing. It’s not a stretch to forecast that political support for Israel from places like Canada and the US, as the next generation comes to power, might look different than it does today. “The shift in youth preferences may become the story of 2024 with big political implications in the US and in Canada,” Coletto says.
It is still very early in the US election cycle, but the biggest surprise so far? Trump connects with the kids. Everywhere.
________
As I finished writing my column today, news broke that former federal New Democrat leader Ed Broadbent has died at age 87. Broadbent was the very definition of a true public servant and embodied the best of what people expect from political leaders. He transformed and modernized the NDP from the left-wing political conscience of Parliament to a viable power player in government.
Broadbent, as my colleague Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group's Global Macro-Geopolitics practice, put it, “distinguished himself as a political thinker, a champion of working-class Canadians, and a politician who earned the respect of his peers across the House of Commons and of people throughout Canada."
- Evan Solomon, Publisher
What would a second Trump term mean? Think Jurassic Park
From Donald Trump's perspective, what was the biggest mistake of his first term? Appointing folks who turned out to be establishmentarians might be a strong candidate, according to Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker and co-author of "The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021."
Based on over 300 interviews with people intimately familiar with Trump's first experience in the White House, she expects a second term will differ in tone and tactics. One source even likened it to the infamous scene in 1993's "Jurassic Park" in which velociraptors learn to open doors.
"That is a pretty scary moment when a very senior US national security official tells you that that's what's going to be happening in Trump's second term," she said while discussing the subject with GZERO in a livestream discussion on January 8 about Eurasia Group's Top Risks for 2024. "Take it seriously."
Watch the full livestream discussion with Ian Bremmer, Cliff Kupchan, Susan Glasser, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, Marietje Schaake, and Evan Solomon.
Check out Eurasia Group's 2024 Top Risks report.
Ian Explains: The media's trust problem
It’s getting harder and harder to tell fact from fiction. Trust in media is at an all-time low. At the same time, partisanship is skyrocketing, and generative AI is challenging the very idea of truth.
This week on Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down how the media landscape has changed since the early days of live TV and why the 2024 US presidential election will be a major test of our ability to detect and prevent misinformation from spreading online.
Cable news has come a long way from the 1960 presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, where Nixon famously showed up sweaty and pale, while John F. Kennedy showed up tanned and camera-ready. People who listened on the radio thought Nixon won the debate. But on TV, the advantage went to Kennedy and the polls quickly turned in his favor. It was the first-ever live TV debate and forever changed how media and politics interact with each other.
In the 60-plus years since, it’s only gotten harder to separate the message from the medium. A 24/7 cable cycle has turned the idea of news into mass entertainment. And hyper-partisan talk radio shows, thousands of political podcasts, and social media’s endless doom-scroll have created a perfect incubator for information––and disinformation––overload.
2024 will be the first US presidential election in the age of generative AI. The risk of spreading false or misleading information to voters is enormous. Despite calls from industry watchdogs and tech experts, US lawmakers have yet to pass any real guardrails for AI technology. And given the rapid pace of development, by the time the election rolls around next year, it will be even harder to tell an AI-generated video or image from the real thing.
Whether regulators and lawmakers can come up with an effective way to identify and combat AI misinformation is anyone’s guess, but one thing is clear: the stakes are incredibly high. And the future of US democracy may depend on it.
Watch Ian Explains for the full breakdown, and for more on the US, watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television and at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld.