Waiting out the ongoing American chaos

If you missed Wednesday’s speech to the American nation by President Donald Trump, you can rest assured you didn’t miss much that you haven’t already seen.

Except, perhaps, a performance that should give you serious pause about where our next-door neighbour and largest trading partner is heading. (A harried Free Press editorial writer watched it all, so you don’t have to.)

Flanked by two flags and standing behind a podium, Trump spoke for roughly 17 minutes, claiming that inflation had been defeated, wages were rising, drug prices were about to fall by “400, 500 and even 600 per cent” and America was respected “like never before.”

A sample: “We’re doing what nobody thought was even possible, not even remotely possible. There has never, frankly, been anything like it. One year ago our country was dead. We were absolutely dead. Our country was ready to fail, totally failed. Now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world, and that’s said by every single leader that I’ve spoken to over the last five months.”

Just look at Trump’s oft-repeated trope about drug prices: a 100 per cent decline in a US$100 drug price would mean it would be provided to you for free. A 600 per cent decline means what? That you would be paid $500 just to accept your prescription?

The expression “old man yells at clouds” was, in his address, quite simply replaced by “old man yells at America.”

But yelling them doesn’t make your words true.

And a majority of Americans have to know all too well that they aren’t true.

Affordability is a major problem for Americans, job numbers are falling, layoffs are increasing and inflation is stubbornly continuing. Manufacturing jobs, the very thing that Trump’s tariffs were supposed to create, fell in November by 5,000 jobs, marking a consistent seven-month record of falling numbers since Trump announced his “Liberation Day” broad-based tariffs.

There are two possibilities: one, that Trump believes what he’s saying and is living in a world completely detached from the reality of the life of American citizens.

Or, he doesn’t believe it, while thinking that if he says it forcefully enough, a credulous American public will ignore the evidence of their own bills and paycheques, and accept his words as gospel.

It brings to mind the words George Orwell famously wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

And yet it continues, and Republican members of the U.S. government show absolutely no sign of having the will or ability to rein in a president who seems to be deteriorating in real time.

The only clear-eyed analysis of this particular situation is that things have the potential to get much, much worse, and quickly. We have already watched Trump order a blockade on Venezuelan tankers and blow up vessels that are ostensibly involved in bringing drugs to the U.S. As his position continues to deteriorate, what will his next act on the global stage entail? He has the means to easily start a war, if for no other reason than distracting the American public.

Canada has to protect itself in any way it can. As we’ve said before, the best approach may well be to be amenable, eager to negotiate, but never actually agree to anything.

Look busy, stay pleasant while appearing compliant, commit to nothing and sign nothing.

Wait out the “Donald decay” while receiving as little damage as possible.

Another famous American, boxer Muhammad Ali, called that method the rope-a-dope.

Our goal should be to reduce the fallout north of the border as much as we possibly can.