This Disintegration of North America |
Photo by Muhammed Nuri Çiçenoğlu
Almost exactly 30 years ago, Canadian Bacon depicted a U.S. president picking on his neighbor to the north to boost his sagging approval ratings. Starring Alan Alda, John Candy, and Rhea Perlman, the film was supposed to be a comedy. Director Michael Moore was trying to satirize the U.S. penchant for invading other countries. Taking that notion to its absurd limit, Moore chose to depict a skirmish with Canada.
Ah, the good old days, when you could laugh about such things.
Marx once wrote, with regard to the return of a Bonaparte, that “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” Obviously, Marx couldn’t have anticipated the rise of Donald Trump, who has made a political career of turning Marx on his head by transforming farce into tragedy. Just compare his first term (hah-hah!) to his second term (uh-oh!).
When it comes to Canada, Trump hasn’t yet sent the U.S. army across the border. But don’t rule it out—or the more likely possibility that he’ll dispatch military forces to Mexico to battle narcotraffickers (or stop Central American migrants in their tracks).
In the meantime, Trump has managed to use his beloved tariffs to disrupt economic relations with both Canada and Mexico. Amid boycotts of U.S. products and a steep decline in tourists heading south, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that the U.S.-Canadian relationship, “based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over.”
Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, while talking tough on Mexican sovereignty, has taken a different tack by negotiating mano a mano with Trump. But disputes over water, drugs, and migrants nevertheless are pushing relations to a breaking point. Trump has already rushed U.S. troops to take control of land near the southern border. It wouldn’t take much for him to push them over the line.
The trade agreement that replaced NAFTA and that Trump himself touted so much when he signed it into law in 2020 is coming up for revision. It’s hard not to anticipate that the rancor Trump has stirred up to the north and south will doom this effort before it even begins.
Perhaps like a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Trump sees North America as a model that needs disruption. But usually such entrepreneurs have an alternative in their back pockets to substitute for the supposedly flawed status quo—Uber replacing taxis, say, or iPhones superseding flip phones.
What alternative could Trump possibly be proposing for North America?
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