Trump’s plans and executive actions get darker

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/01/2025 (278 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The circus has officially come to town.

But it’s a sad and bitter circus. And perhaps, for Canadians, a dangerous one.

Performative, reactive and revenge-driven, Day 1 of the second Donald Trump presidency brought everything from attempts to rewrite the U.S. Constitution with the stroke of a president’s pen to executive orders that will have profound effects worldwide to presidential orders that are reminiscent of the fripperies of a tinpot dictator.

As Trump tossed pens used to sign executive orders to the crowd watching him sign, you have to wonder how many Americans recognize just how personally they will be affected by things such as Trump’s executive order cancelling former president Joe Biden’s reduced drug prices for Americans receiving Medicare and Medicaid.

An executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America? As petty and puerile as a past effort to call French fries Freedom Fries because France was opposed to the American invasion of Iraq.

A plan to use an executive order to nullify birthright citizenship? Well, the 14th amendment to the U.S. constitution is pretty clear: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” And U.S. courts, including the Supreme Court, have decided that people born in the U.S., except for particular limited circumstances, are automatically American citizens.

Another executive order to leave the World Health Organization because of its “globalization” of health care (leave aside that a global view is something you might expect to see from something named the World Health Organization)? Fine and dandy, except for the fact the order directly contravenes a 1948 joint resolution passed by both Congress and the Senate to join and fund the organization.

Pulling out of the Paris Accord? Well, we at least knew that was coming — because it happened the last time Trump was president.

In fact, most of the executive orders that rained down yesterday had been well telegraphed by Trump in the lead-up to inauguration.

Other things are, however, suddenly seeming both more clear and more unsettling.

Probably the most concerning for Canada, a neighbour and friend of the U.S. for generations, is that we find ourselves the target of possible punitive tariffs and veiled and not-so-veiled threats about our natural resources, such as fresh water.

Trump’s inaugural address brought another sort of commitment, especially where the new president spelled out his plans for the future of the U.S.: “The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectation and carries our flag to new and beautiful horizons.”

We live right next door. When Trump jokes about Canada becoming the 51st state, tells voters we have available resources such as water that the U.S. can just take, and tells all Americans the U.S. plans to expand its territory, well, we might want to take heed, especially as the rhetoric turns in the “manifest destiny” direction toward U.S. expansionism.

The U.S. has been a great friend and neighbour for generations — there have been hiccups, to be sure.

But it might be time to consider how friends behave with each other, and whether continuing to build this particular friendship should be put on hold for a while.

Like, maybe four years or so, to start.

We should also carefully consider how our own politicians, federal and provincial, see and explain their roles for keeping Canada safe, strong and independent from a neighbour that, as Trump has said, will lean toward being explicitly, directly and consistently “America First.”