The most anti-American President

The damage Trump has already done to his country's reputation won't be easily repaired.

Moosehead, Canada’s largest independent brewery (Molson and Labatt were long ago swallowed up by multinationals) has released a “Presidential pack” with “just enough Canadian lagers to get through a full Presidential term”:

Just 1,461 cans? The way things are going, I’m not sure that would be enough to see me through Labour Day.

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If you want a sense of the national mood up here, the top story in my local paper is about a musician refusing to perform in the United States, while some Nova Scotia businesses are no longer shipping products south of the border. A bakery is selling “F**k Trump” donuts - I know where I’m grabbing a snack next time I’m in Cape Breton - and travel to the United States by car was down 23% compared to last February, though a Canadian dollar so weak we’d need to remortgage our houses just to shop at Dollar Tree doesn’t help.

There’s always a baseline level of anti-Americanism here in Canada regardless of which party controls the White House (Rick Mercer’s “Talking to Americans” segments and the “I am Canadian” beer commercial came out when Bill Clinton was President) and it tends to really flare up when the President is a Republican, only to taper off when a Democrat is elected, and maybe this will all be forgotten in 2029 when (rolls dice, consults magic 8-ball) Gretchen Whitmer is sworn in.

Indeed, I’m already seeing newly nationalistic Canadians looking for “loopholes,” such as justifying shopping at American-owned Costco (”they treat their employees well!”) though making sure not to buy Canadian wine bottled and sold by a Canadian company but featuring the name of a newly problematic Canadian celebrity.

This says more about the Canadian national character than anything I’ve ever read.

And of course, giving up American social media websites - even the one owned by Trump’s BFF Elon Musk - is unthinkable. Whenever I bring that up, the response usually involves the “yet you participate in society” cartoon by (American) Matt Bors.

Still, as someone who remembers the Bush years well, the mood seems to be much angrier this time around. And not just in Canada, notes India’s Economic Times:

The Trump administration is boosting a powerful force in global affairs: anti-Americanism.

Canadians have taken to booing the American national anthem and Panamanians to burning US flags. The British tabloids have tarred and feathered Vice President JD Vance for insulting British troops. A carnival float in Dusseldorf, Germany, displayed giant puppets of Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, shaking hands while squeezing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy between them into a bloodied pulp. A sign on the float read “Hitler-Stalin Pact 2.0.” Back at home, the Washington Post has published a guide on how to navigate hostility abroad (“dress neutrally, not patriotically”).

There has never been a better time to be anti-American. Trump embodies everything critics of the US have always warned about, multiplied several times over. Yankee arrogance? He and Vance, in the Oval Office, shamelessly bullied the leader of a nation victimized by the Russian president’s aggression. Yankee imperialism? Trump bragged to a cheering Congress that he will take over Greenland “one way or another.” Yankee incompetence? His tariffs are destabilizing global stock markets and downgrading his own economy.

A YouGov poll published March 4 shows positive feelings toward the US have fallen by between six and 28 points since Trump was elected. The smallest decline (from 48 to 42) is in Italy. The biggest (from 48 to 20) is in Denmark, where, unsurprisingly, people are annoyed by his intention to annex part of their territory. There is currently nowhere in Europe where more than half the population has a positive feeling about the US.

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One of the reasons why sensible great powers present themselves as benign defenders of the global order is to prevent smaller powers from ganging up against them. Trump’s America has decided to do the opposite. Western powers are forging alliances that exclude (or at least don’t include) the US. The European Union, particularly in Germany, is beginning to take its military destiny in its hands after decades of passivity. The EU has struck trade deals with Latin America and Malaysia and has made various side accords with Canada and China. A number of its allies regard the US, in the words of the political scientist Michael Beckley, as “a rogue superpower, a mercantilist behemoth determined to squeeze every ounce of wealth and power from the rest of the world.”

Even as America weakens alliances that it has spent the post-World War II era cultivating, the axis of autocracy is doing the opposite. Russia and China have pledged lasting friendship. What used to be called nonaligned powers are queuing up to join the BRICS group of emerging-market nations. The US can no longer assume that other liberal powers will automatically come to its side because of shared interests and culture. Nor can it assume that, when push comes to shove, nonaligned powers will choose America over China.

The genie of anti-Americanism is now not only out of the bottle but doing immense damage to the country’s long-term interests. Even if Trump proves to be an aberration, as seems increasingly likely as aversion to his policies spreads at home and abroad, it will take many years to regain the trust of the free world.

Donald Trump’s ineptitude at running casinos, hotels, airlines, fake universities, sports teams and governments is well established, but the one thing I always thought he was legitimately good at was branding. Somehow the man made his last name a symbol of wealth, status and luxury despite a long list of failures and scandals that would have sunk pretty much anyone else.

Under Trump, the American “brand” has become more toxic than ever before. Maybe the difference is that he’s good at promoting his personal brand, not anyone else’s.

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Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be happy with Alberta premier Danielle Smith, perceived as Canada’s most MAGA-adjacent politician of note, doing media with Ben Shapiro, so you can only imagine how left-wing Canadians feel about it:

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is facing calls to cancel a speaking appearance with conservative media personality Ben Shapiro at a fundraiser for Florida-based PragerU.

A conservative content company, it describes itself as an educational media platform devoted to furthering U.S. values. Its content, approved for use in schools by several states, has been criticized for downplaying the harms of slavery and climate change and distorting historic events.

Shapiro, co-founder of conservative media company The Daily Wire and former editor-in-chief of Breitbart News, has made past homophobic and transphobic comments.

More recently, he’s made social media posts about Canada becoming the 51st state of the U.S.

“When we take Canada, you will be expelled to Panama to work the canal,” Shapiro posted on X in response to a post made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in January.

Doing this now? When Canada is threatened by a right-wing American government like never before? I’m…all in favor of her doing this, actually.