Bryan Detchou: Don’t expect the Democrats to save us - National Post

Copy URL Facebook Linked In X (Twitter) Loading account options Sign In Manage Account Close account menu Sign Out California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks on a campaign stop with Democratic U.S. Senate candidate for New Hampshire Chris Pappas, right, on Oct. 17. Newsom has said Canada shouldn't expect tariffs to disappear under a Democratic government. (JOSEPH PREZIOSO / AFP via Getty Images) By Bryan Detchou November 3, 2026 at 6:00 a.m. Today, Americans go to the polls, and if the forecasts hold, Democrats will take back the House of Representatives and may even claim the Senate. Many Canadians will be tempted to read that as the beginning of the end of a bad chapter. They should not rush to such a conclusion, however great the temptation.

A Democratic Congress will make life harder for President Donald Trump. Subpoenas will fly and budgets will be fought line by line. But this president has never governed primarily through Congress. He governs through executive orders, emergency declarations and creative readings of trade laws that date back almost a century. When the Supreme Court struck down his emergency tariffs earlier this year and Congress voted to reclaim its authority over tariffs on Canada, the White House simply turned to another tool: Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a long-dormant provision.

That is the pattern, and a change in congressional control will not break it. Any bill curbing his trade powers would face a veto, and overriding one takes two-thirds of both chambers, a margin no one is predicting. The courts move slowly, and every loss sends the White House hunting for a new statute.

Nor should we assume a weakened U.S. administration is a more cautious one. A president facing hostile committees and a ticking lame-duck clock may conclude he has little left to lose. Cornered, he may simply double down on the trade fights and grievances that define his presidency. For the next two years, at least, Canadians should plan for more of the same, and count any improvement as a rare bonus.

While it is far too early to predict the outcome of the 2028 election, let us consider the possibility the Democrats win. Such a victory would bring a welcome change in tone, but not necessarily a sharp change in policy direction. Joe Biden, after all, retained many of Trump’s first-term tariffs and doubled down on Buy American rules.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, who leads the country’s largest blue state and is widely seen as a strong 2028 contender, was refreshingly candid when CBC’s Rosemary Barton asked him this summer whether Canadians could expect the tariffs to disappear and real free trade to return under a Democrat president. He said he couldn’t guarantee it. What he could promise was that it wouldn’t look like this. A meaningful distinction, but not a return to the status quo.

Speaking last month at the Warsaw Security Forum, senior Democrat and Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes went further. A Democratic White House, he suggested, would change the tone of U.S. relations with its allies: no more diplomatic blow-ups like the Greenland affair, a return to more normal relations, and a friendlier approach to diplomacy. But underneath, he warned, the country has already moved on. Many American voters believe the U.S. paid for its allies’ defence for far too long. Democrats may dislike Trump’s methods, but tariffs are now entrenched as a legitimate tool of economic policy, even if their costs are unpopular in polling. And the American instinct to turn inward is growing again, if it ever truly went away.

Himes’ warning was aimed at Europeans, but it applies just as squarely to Canadians: there will be no return to business as usual after Trump, so take your destiny into your own hands.

We should thank Democrats for their candour about what a U.S. administration under their leadership would look like. It helps us to prepare. And, to be fair, many of the frustrations driving American demands stem from legitimate places, even if Trump and his administration often express them in ways that are neither eloquent nor constructive. On NATO, for instance, Canada spent years well below the alliance’s two per cent defence-spending target while relying on the United States to backstop our security. We were not doing our fair share, and Washington had long thought so.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has declared our old relationship with the United States to be over. But it is not just the relationship that has changed; America itself has. No election, today or in 2028, will reverse that.

That is why the momentum we have built cannot be allowed to slow, nor can we allow the complacency that brought us here to creep back into our thinking or our actions.

Diversifying our trade, doubling our non-U.S. exports, reducing our dependence on a single market, raising defence spending, tearing down internal trade barriers, cutting red tape, reviewing our tax system and fixing a permitting process that takes far too long to build anything: none of it becomes optional because the mood in Washington improves.

Trump will not be president forever. Friendlier leaders will come, and parts of this fractured relationship will be mended. But a country that wants to secure its economic and national sovereignty for the next century cannot outsource its future to the results of someone else’s elections.

In an increasingly volatile and uncertain world, the realities of being a middle power demand that we develop both the hard power to deter threats and the soft power to shape outcomes. Only then can we defend our interests, our sovereignty and our prosperity on our own terms. We need, in short, to always have cards to play.

Don’t expect the Democrats to save us. We have to save ourselves.

Bryan Detchou is Senior Director, Natural Resources, Sustainability and the Environment, at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

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