The recent deal with China obliges Canada to send raw materials in exchange for manufactured goods, which is far less lucrative for Canada
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the recent Davos conference — where he called for decoupling from the U.S. while entering a “strategic partnership” with China — was greeted rapturously abroad. His tough on Trump rhetoric is certainly winning political points at home as well. Read more
The recent announcement that California led the nation in losing domestic migrants may seem like another nail in the Golden State’s coffin. It’s just another piece of bad news for a state that, despite having the most billionaires in the world, suffers the nation’s highest poverty rate, per recent Census data. The state’s young people are faring poorly: Among teenagers, the unemployment rate tops 21%, just short of twice the national average. And for those under 30, California’s jobless rate exceeds that of every other state except for Mississippi. Read more
With Trump’s 2024 coalition under threat, the decisive political struggle in America has shifted inward, to the Democratic Party. The clash between pro-business moderates and an ascendant far-Left will play out nationwide, but its defining test is now taking shape in California. Read more
Americans, like much of the world, are getting tired of Donald Trump. Like an old actor who still insists on playing romantic leads, he has managed to become a caricature of himself, a blustering, overweight, sometimes barely coherent one-man wrecking crew. A usually sympathetic conservative journalist, writing in the Wall Street Journal, recently described his behaviour as “incontinent”. Read more
Will California implement a wealth tax on its billionaires? The plan has been gaining traction in the state legislature — and while it is some way off becoming law, some billionaires seem to think it will. This week, real estate broker Julian Johnston told Fox News that he’s working directly with three billionaires moving from California to South Florida, where there is no income tax for those who reside there fewer than 183 days of the year. While it looks like California is finally ending its love affair with Silicon Valley, the question of a wealth tax — not just in the Golden State — won’t go away any time soon. Read more
I now feel what earlier generations of Jews felt – a sense of belonging to a marginalised and constantly imperiled people. During Hanukkah, I went to as many public lightings as possible, my small act of defiance. But many others stayed away, particularly after the Bondi Beach attack in Australia.
The election of Zohran Mamdani as New York’s first socialist mayor creates a dilemma for the still historically unpopular Democrats. Some elements of the party – notably those based around the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – favour massive redistribution of income from the wealthy, while the traditionally dominant gentry liberals fear a loss of support from the oligarch class (particularly leading figures in industries like tech), who until recently had funded their campaigns. Read more
Not long ago, all right-thinking liberals were sure that fossil fuels would soon become “stranded assets” as The Guardian once put it. Hydrocarbon-based energy sources, the thinking ran, would become ever more worthless as the world entered a bright renewable future. Yet as President Trump’s takeover of Venezuela demonstrates, there is, in fact, a lot of life left in those deposits; as the progressive American Prospect recently lamented, the “fossil-fuel empire” has struck back. Read more
Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, when running for president in 1992, noted that Bill Clinton was “an unusually good liar”. But Big Dog has met more than his match in California Governor Gavin Newsom, rapidly emerging as a front-runner in some polls in the race for the Democratic nomination in 2028.
“Living next to you, is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
— Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, 1969.
I have good news for Canadians, including my wife’s family — the grunting has a sell by date. Donald Trump is already on the way out. Even as he postures and shapes the world, sometimes for the better, often for the worse, Trump is rapidly becoming a “lame duck,” even losing his grip on his once loyal vassals in Congress, as well as the constitutional conservatives on the Supreme Court.
There have also been reports that suggest his health may be declining. Trump is 79, reportedly takes more aspirin than his doctors recommend, gets little sleep, sometimes has trouble keeping his eyes open at times during televised White House events, and his ankles swell. His diet of fries, Big Macs and sodas probably doesn’t help.
Yet losing Trump, before or after he slinks into the sunset, will not alter the fundamental realities shaping America’s future and that of Canada. The United States remains North America’s dominant power, standing as the world’s leading fossil fuel producer and military force, as seen recently in both Iran and Venezuela. Married to the country’s technological power — challenged seriously only by China — the U.S. will continue casting a shadow over its far less populous neighbor.
Trump has already changed Canada, even making it more Trumpian. Carney, the former apostle of the climate industrial complex, has rediscovered the importance of Canada’s natural resources, most of all oil and gas. And he is doing much of what Trump did to close the border, albeit with less savagery, as Canada too becomes more restrictive on immigration.
This is happening because our societies converge even as our political leaders squabble. Canada’s population, like that of the U.S., is starting to shrink due to low birthrates among the native-born and less mass immigration. The pervasive power of the supremely global oligarchic tech platforms remains unchallenged, informing — and often poisoning — the already desiccated body politic. And as in America, notes scholar George Dunn, Canada’s unique regions have been bowdlerized by mass communication and culture. Basically, we share the same dilemmas.
Read the rest of this story at National Post
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: U.S. and Canada flags together at Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.
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