Opinion | Canada can’t wait for America to return to normal — this is the new normal - Toronto Star

Betting Canada's economic strategy on one election outcome, or one president's popularity, is the same mistake Canada made after 2016.

Flags of Canada and United States fly across the international border on the Gordie Howe International bridge that connects Windsor and Detroit on Sept. 6. “Canada’s old assumption that geography and alliances automatically guaranteed prosperity and security is no longer valid,” writes Walid Hejazi.

Walid Hejazi is a professor of economic analysis and policy at the Rotman School of Management.

Back in 2017, I had been chatting with Financial Times columnist Edward Luce and he made an observation: Many people viewed U.S. President Donald Trump’s election as a temporary aberration, one that would end once he left office. Nearly a decade later, Canada is still grappling with the opposite reality, yet the perception that things are temporary persists.

The trade war is often discussed as a dispute to be negotiated away, measured in tariffs, retaliation and timelines. That framing misses the larger lesson.

The challenge facing Canada is not just Donald Trump. It is the growing realization that the assumptions underpinning Canada’s economic strategy for decades no longer hold. Prime Minister Mark Carney captured this shift in a speech at Davos earlier this year, observing that “great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.”

Trump and his cabinet are flooding the zone with a tsunami of spin, writes Daniel Tisch. What