By Brian Lee Crowley, March 17, 2026
This text is adapted from a speech given by Macdonald-Laurier Institute Managing Director Brian Lee Crowley at the Château Laurier in Ottawa on March 9, 2026.
It is the greatest riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma of the modern world: how we are to understand Donald Trump? That’s a tall order for a short talk, but here are a few ideas for your consideration. These remarks build on a talk I gave almost exactly a year ago at the dawn of the second Trump presidency. The intervening year has, in my view, only solidified my analysis and given me lots of examples to illustrate the landmarks necessary for navigating the stormy waters around the person of Donald Trump.
We are in the twilight of the postwar era. In that era the world was divided into two camps. On the one hand was a democratic and freedom-loving West composed of a wealthy and militarily powerful America and an impoverished and weakened Europe. On the other, an ideologically and militarily expansionist Communist bloc actively seeking, by subversion and intimidation, to pry away members of the Western camp and unaligned countries in what we then called the Third World. In 1945, America alone represented half of the world’s GDP, while much of Europe was a smoking ruin.
The rest of the West recovered for many reasons, but chief amongst them was American generosity. The Marshall Plan used American wealth to rebuild its former adversaries, just as America opened its markets to the world’s exports – often on much more favourable terms than American exports were welcomed in return. And America essentially took on responsibility for defending the West from Soviet expansionism. In 1950, US defence spending represented roughly 70 per cent of total spending on defence by all the NATO allies. This was the subtext of John F. Kennedy’s famous 1961 speech in which he proclaimed that America “shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”
The Soviet Union collapsed 35 years ago. Today, America represents 26 per cent of global GDP and the EU 14 per cent. American GDP per capita last year was $86,600. Germany’s was a healthy $55,500, while France’s was $46,200. The EU has become a protectionist bloc with significant barriers to US imports while the US still supplies two-thirds of all defence spending by NATO countries. So, in other words, while America declined relatively speaking from an economic point of view, other NATO countries grew handsomely and, freed from the need to defend themselves from external threats, they often spent their new-found wealth instead on generous welfare state measures.
Meanwhile, Russia’s share of global GDP fell to a paltry 3.6 per cent, whereas China has climbed to nearly a fifth of global wealth production. And China is now the chief ideological, economic, and military competitor to the United States.
The West relied on American generosity long after the conditions that justified it had ceased to obtain. The failure to redistribute the costs and benefits of the Western alliance following the fall of the Soviet Union was a dangerous accident waiting to happen.
Remember that presidents going back decades have asked the NATO allies to pick up more of the burden of defence. The real change the Trump presidency represents is not some unforeseeable and inexplicable abandonment of the NATO alliance by a thug and madman. It is simply America no longer asking nicely. The fact that we resent being spoken to in this way is, frankly, self-indulgent on our part, although I quite agree that Donald Trump seems to revel in being as offensive as possible. That does not make him wrong in returning to America’s allies some of the contempt and condescension to which America has been subjected in recent years by its friends.
And of course, his offensive style is part of his strategy: as he wrote in The Art of the Deal, he begins a negotiation by basically convincing everyone else that he is the craziest man in the room and if he doesn’t get what he wants, he will bring everything crashing down. And he relies on people taking his behaviour at face value, losing their nerve and getting all emotional. As an old teacher of mine used to say, in a negotiation, the first one to lose his temper loses. Trump’s strategy is to drive his negotiating partners to distraction with outrageous statements so that they lose the ability to focus on their own interests. Certainly, Canada has repeatedly fallen into this trap. This is something worth remembering as we examine the Trump presidency.
Trump has at least three priorities. If you follow the logic of these central ideas and make allowances for his bombastic style, there is little that cannot be understood about Donald Trump and his actions.
Number One: America must be “Top Nation.” Not “the dominant member of a Western alliance,” but America alone. China is the competitor for the title of Top Nation and the rivalry between America and China is the main preoccupation in the White House. Every other foreign policy question is subordinate to this one.
Number Two: The rest of the world has taken America for granted and, worse, successive administrations and DC insiders have colluded in this. Whether it is illegal immigration, defence spending, national security, border management, trade, organized crime, money laundering, cosying up to China, or any one of a number of other files, Donald Trump and his circle are determined that any accommodations granted to other countries be matched by concessions of at least equivalent value to the US in these areas. It’s true that Trump often has only that haziest idea of how some of the deals that he has in his crosshairs may already be in America’s interests, and he doubtless exaggerates how America has been wronged by its allies and partners, but he is correct that America has often sacrificed its own interests to maintain alliance solidarity. Since he wants Top Nation status for America, and regards reliance on allies as a source of weakness, not strength, the old appeals to history and shared values will get us precisely nowhere.
Number Three: At the forefront of Trump’s political priorities are the Americans who have paid the price of decades of sacrificing the country’s interests in the name of the rules-based postwar order. These are the people immortalized in Vice President J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, precisely the people who have been treated with such contempt for decades by Washington’s elites, derided as “baskets of deplorables” and “clinging to their religion and their guns.” These people regard Donald Trump as their tribune and he will move heaven and earth not to disappoint them.
It is with these people in mind that Donald Trump wants to unleash an American economic renaissance, aiming to ensure that Americans who want work are able to get it and the despair that has fuelled the fentanyl scourge, among other pathologies, is replaced with hope and optimism. Moreover, the main engine of growth he wants to unleash is going to be cheap energy, the lifeblood of the economy and a source of growth that has been obstructed by a green ideology among the elites that Trump unequivocally rejects.
The tariffs and other instruments of economic power that Trump is deploying are being used to bring jobs back to America and reduce trade imbalances. However, the central role energy is playing in this strategy is not widely understood. This does not mean that all of Trump’s assumptions are correct, nor that his tariff wars will necessarily succeed or avoid becoming counterproductive. Rather, the point is that the objectives behind these policies are comprehensible and part of a larger plan we would be foolish to ignore or worse, wilfully misunderstand.
Now that we have examined Trump’s chief motivations, let’s look at the lessons we can draw from three policies that he has pursued in Year One of his second presidency: the attack on Iran, his relationship with Mexico, and Greenland and the Gordie Howe Bridge
Let’s talk about Iran. Iran illustrates not how similar he is to the old neo-cons, but rather, how different. Trump has completely abandoned the old liberal idealism and globalism that sought to change regimes in order to usher in democracy. Trump’s approach is vastly different. He begins by appealing to the self-interest of the leadership of America’s chief opponents: China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and so forth. He offers them a chance to make a deal with America that leaves the regime in place while opening the door to American trade and investment and reciprocity. In exchange, they agree to drop their hostility towards America and end policies that damage American interests, such as developing nuclear weapons ultimately able to hit America; narco-trafficking; engaging in misinformation and disinformation; or using movement of people across the US border as a strategy to destabilize American society and politics.
His appeal is basically, let’s get rich together. Because Trump always starts by making nice with bad regimes, a lot of commentators interpret this as weakness. It is anything but – and Nicolas Maduro and Ali Khamenei likely agree.
As Daniel McCarthy has written, in Trump’s second term he’s gone beyond the negation of the old liberal globalism to build a new activist ideology of his own, marked by a willingness to use military force to compel adversaries to make deals. The idealistic component of liberal interventionism – including the liberal interventionism of past Republican administrations – is missing. Trump doesn’t seem concerned about promoting democracy; his aim is simply to bring about adversaries’ submission to America’s interests as Trump conceives them, not to her ideals.
So, the implied threat in the background of Trump’s offers to make nice with nasty regimes is that he can engineer the replacement of the regime leadership with more compliant alternatives.
And as many commentators have observed, also lurking in the background is Trump’s long-game aim of thwarting China and cementing America’s status as Top Nation. Remember, China’s greatest allies are Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran. Not only are these regimes either decapitated or on notice, but they are also losing their ability to supply China with heavily discounted oil – and it is becoming clear that having China’s patronage is no guarantee of regime survival. Add to that the clear superiority of American arms against forces wielding Russian and Chinese armaments, and China’s prestige and authority have been severely undermined.
Meanwhile, the United States has just opened negotiations with Mexico on the renewal of the free trade arrangements between those two countries. Pointedly, America has not seen fit to open formal talks with Canada, the third partner, with the US and Mexico, in the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
Why? Because Mexico has learned a valuable lesson – not to get distracted by Trump’s showmanship, threats, and disrespect. Mexico has instead focused with laser intensity on its national interests and shown respect and even deference to Donald Trump. This has gotten Mexico the sympathetic attention it needs from the Trump administration. It’s clear that Mexico’s co-operation with America in challenging the narco-cartels – and even taking out one of their principal leaders – was a price exacted by Washington and willingly paid by Mexico. And yet Mexico’s attitude toward the US has traditionally been far more “Elbows Up” than Canada’s.
The difference is that Canada has swallowed the Trump schtick and fallen into the trap of being offended and outraged by his brusque and brash negotiating strategy. In truth, we need America far more than it needs us. We are nice to have for them. The relationship with the US is existential for us, and no amount of trade missions to China and Japan and India and fanciful talk of trade diversification or membership in the EU is going to change that.
Economists who study these things have concluded that about 80 per cent of trade is explained by proximity and a mere 20 per cent or so is down to trade arrangements. Despite this, the current federal government is desperately trying to increase trade with partners that are across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, thousands of kilometres away from Canada. While it is very nice for governments to make trade-promoting deals, it’s important to remember that governments by and large do not engage in trade – companies trade with each other. Moreover, the bulk of trade across the Canada-US border is intra-firm trade. In other words, it involves different parts of the same company trading with each other. These trading relationships are quite indifferent to any trade-opening efforts with other parts of the world.
Yet despite our two countries being inextricably bound together, and the existential nature of Canada’s reliance on the US market, we Canadians have manoeuvred ourselves into a self-defeating Elbows Up mentality. Thus, even when we are offered an opportunity to do something that Trump would really value, like offering rhetorical backing to his Iran campaign, we cannot deliver, and end up prevaricating all over the place.
Ultimately, we have simply confirmed Trump’s view that Canada is a weak and unreliable ally that has little in the way of hard military power to offer, and that has squandered its energy potential thanks to its decade-long obsession with climate change. We are reaping what we have sown.
As for Trump’s musings about both Greenland and the Gordie Howe Bridge, you might ask: How are these two things related? They are both instances of the Trump strategy at work. The important thing to focus on is not that he offended allies needlessly in both cases, although he certainly did that. It is not the historical ignorance he displayed, although there was lots of that.
The key lesson is that despite Trump’s bombastic rhetoric, he was actually willing to settle for far less than he claimed he wanted. He has neither invaded nor annexed Greenland. He was given pretty much carte blanche, and simply stopped talking about it. He doesn’t give a damn whether his tactics caused hurt feelings – NATO allies now tread even more gingerly around the White House, which suits Donald Trump just fine.
In the case of the Gordie Howe Bridge, I think he saw an opening to stick his finger in the eye of both Ottawa and Queen’s Park, two groups for whom he has absolutely no time. When we kept our own counsel, didn’t rise to the Trumpian bait, and just let the facts speak for themselves, he simply dropped the topic – and it appears it is no longer an issue.
Just over a year ago, when Trump assumed the presidency for a second time, it was clear that Canada’s best course of action was to work in partnership with the United States to strengthen and secure North America. The events of the past year have only reinforced this necessity.
A clever Canada, endowed, like America, with energy abundance, should make it clear to Donald Trump that it wants to work with him to make North America the world’s dominant energy power. Doing so would relieve our partners in the Indo-Pacific from their reliance on dangerously unstable and vulnerable sources of supply in the Middle East. It would also reduce Russia’s ability to finance mischief in Europe, and underwrite a massive shift from coal to clean natural gas in Asia. If America had to supply its own energy needs entirely from domestic production, instead of getting four million barrels a day from Canada, it would have to cut its oil exports – and their geostrategic weight – nearly in half. At a time when the fracking revolution’s increase in US oil supplies may be tapering off, the oilsands’ exceptional longevity will be a real ace in the hole for Trump’s dream of world energy dominance.
If we added to that an offer of a comprehensive Grand Bargain that codifies our commitment to resolving the full range of issues that plague the current Canada–US relationship (for example, full compliance with our NATO commitments; becoming an indispensable partner in the defence and security of the Arctic; tightening our border security; ending Canada’s current status as a money-laundering haven for organized crime, including narco-cartels; and reversing our slide into becoming the soft underbelly of North American security through lax immigration and toleration of terrorist movements and nefarious activities by authoritarian states on our territory), then we would certainly be able to strike a deal with the Trump administration that would protect and promote both our national interests and keep the trade flows moving.
Fortunately, Donald Trump is quite wrong when he says that America needs nothing from Canada. American firms rely on Canada for many things that cannot easily or cheaply be re-placed by US suppliers. That is why time is on our side in the tariff spats now underway. It has always fallen to Canada to draw America’s gaze to the benefits of continental co-operation and this time will be no exception. That is why one of the highest priorities of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, along with its unique Washington office, the Center for North American Prosperity and Security (CNAPS), is to outline the key aspects of a potential Grand Bargain between the US and Canada.
To sum up, Canada is both blessed and cursed by its proximity to America. However, we have little practical alternative to making the best of our relationship with the United States. This is especially true because America is not becoming isolationist. On the contrary, it is seeking to reduce its reliance on unwieldy alliances and instead act as independently and freely as possible on the world stage.
If Canada can convince the United States that we are more valuable as a reliable, committed partner within a strong, unencumbered North America, the 21st century will be neither the American nor the Canadian century, but the North American century.
Brian Lee Crowley is the managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
