Keep your eye on the ball: Trump, Distraction Politics & Substantive Change
Plus quick hits on regional innovation centres, overhauling the Canadian federal government and 'Team Canada'
Today, I look at the first hours of the Trump administration before the usual roundup of interesting reads. One quick programming note: There won’t be a second post later this week as I’ll be away, but I’ll be back to normal posting next week. I hope you have a great rest of your week!
Trump, Distraction Politics & Substantive Change
And so, we enter four more years of Donald Trump as President of the USA. Today, I want to examine and briefly discuss what the first few hours of his new administration demonstrate about how things may play out over the coming days, months, and years and how we need to keep our eye on the substantive action.
It is often observed how Donald Trump’s background as a real estate developer and as a TV entertainer shape his approach to politics. Real estate is the epitome of a zero-sum game. You either own the land or you don’t. There aren’t win-wins in the same way as in other areas of business, politics, or life, for that matter. That zero-sum mindset clearly plays out in Trump’s approach to trade deficits. Likewise, the show is crucial to Trump’s whole approach. As his book Art of the Deal put it:
The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.
In the first hours of his new administration, we’re also seeing how another entertainer’s trick is playing out - the art of distraction and the slight of the hand. A big part of what we are witnessing is how outrageous actions or statements are being deployed to mask substantive changes in policy.
Media attention is being sucked up into things like Trump’s announcement that he is renaming the Gulf of Mexico or whether or not Elon Musk intentionally did a Nazi salute (hint, if neo-Nazis are celebrating it, then intentions don’t really matter). In UK politics, this kind of tactic is known as “throwing a dead cat on the table,” which, as Boris Johnson described, will distract onlookers so that “they will be talking about the dead cat, the thing you want them to talk about, and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.”
What marks this kind of distraction by Trump and his allies is that they are not on the defensive. Instead, they are very much on the offence, and these actions are serving to take attention away from a raft of executive orders that are making deep and substantive changes.
These include deep changes to the US federal government, as the University of Michigan Professor of Public Policy
has covered in his newsletter. These actions include a massive politicization of the US public service through a hiring freeze for civilian roles and a hiring spree for political appointees. The reintroduction of Schedule F means that career public servants can be converted into political appointees, removing job protections and opening the door to deep cuts.Trump has also introduced massive changes to the US’s immigration system, going further, faster than in his first term. Actions include the militarization of the US-Mexico border, the suspension of US asylum law, an attempt to end birthright citizenship, and actions to lay the groundwork for mass deportations. These steps, in the words of Amy Fischer of Amnesty International USA, “not only sows chaos and fear among communities across the country and people attempting to seek safety in the US, it perpetuates false narratives and harm rooted in white supremacy.”
Those are only part of the changes, with others targeting key planks of Biden’s industrial strategy by immediately pausing “the disbursement of funds” appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act and still more removing transgender protections. Anticipated tariffs against Canada and other countries haven’t yet materialized, but preliminary steps were taken, so those remain likely at some point.
Not all of these executive actions are likely to stand up. Many are already being challenged in court. Some commentators have noted that these orders are marked by “sloppy legal work” that increases the chances of them being subject to injunctions or struck down. Nonetheless, especially in the US’s highly politicized judicial system, this is not a guarantee.
Even if they are ultimately overturned, they are likely to be enforced in the interim, and these kinds of orders indicate what is to come. The status quo is under assault, and a new type of state is being built in this place. This is a part of a fundamental reordering of the North American system as we know it. Throughout it all, make sure you keep your eye on the ball and not on whatever distraction is being deployed to divert your attention. You never know when that ball will get thrown at your face.
Quick Hits
Do the RICs Still Have a Role to Play? & Why do we need RICs anyway? - In a welcome change of topic, in these two pieces, Charles Plant explores the history and the evidence behind Ontario’s Regional Innovation Centres and what role they could and should play. Plant is always a thoughtful and provocative writer on innovation issues and is true to form here. Worth a read!
Former top bureaucrat calls for major overhaul of the federal government - This piece by Kathryn May neatly summarizes the substantial changes to the federal government that Michael Wernick, the former clerk of the Privy Council, is proposing. These include cutting executive ranks, mergers, and reorganizing departments, such as dismantling Public Services and Procurement Canada. Notably, Wernick makes the case to ensure that structural reforms are central and avoid hasty across-the-board cuts that can undermine state capacity and effectiveness. Given the government is already making hasty, across-the-board cuts that are likely to undermine effectiveness, such as IRCC slashing its workforce by 25%, and that Poilievre is likely to supercharge these, it seems there is a small window to land arguments for a more rational examination of how to make government better.
The ‘Team Canada’ approach to Trump’s tariffs sounds good but exposes weakness - Finally, in this article, Jörg Broschek dissects how “Team Canada” is nothing but a chimera in the absence of “a formalized framework for intergovernmental co-ordination.” Broschek argues that we need to be “institutionalizing – rather than evoking – a Team Canada approach through an intergovernmental agreement for trade policymaking” and that given the “magnitude of the current challenge”, a “province-led Team Canada approach is inadequate” and will “contribute to weakening Canada’s already vulnerable position.” I think that the role of provinces in national policymaking, the nature of Canadian decentralization, and the lack of institutional architecture are topics that haven’t received enough attention in the policy community, so it is good to see them explored here.
Great stuff Tom. Timely analysis on Trump's tactics and great links on Team Canada and Wernick's proposals.
One thing to add re Wernick - he was the Clerk not all that long ago and we didn't hear anything of the sort from him or other senior leaders of the public service at that time. I'd love to know if these were new ideas that he's developed recently, or if there if it is systematically difficult/impossible to advance this type thinking about the public service when you are in a senior role within the system.