Jagmeet Singh needs to start seriously challenging Donald Trump. It’s long been the right thing to do for the NDP leader to push back against the United States but now there’s a growing electoral benefit in challenging the Ugly American.
After a bevy of threats, Trump said he would annex Canada through “economic force”. Simultaneously, he has suggested using military force to take the Panama Canal and Greenland. Despite repeating this threat, Singh hasn’t criticized Trump’s comments on Greenland (at least on X). Nor has the NDP leader condemned his threats regarding Panama (at least on X).
Singh hasn’t even criticized Trump for withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accord (in a sensible world Canada would threaten major tariffs in response.) Nor has he criticized the US president’s call to “clean out” Gaza.
Above the fold on the front of Friday’s Globe and Mail was the headline “Trump calls on NATO members to spend 5% of GDP on Defence.” The US president has raised this demand on multiple occasions. Yet Singh hasn’t denounced what is in practice a major threat to Canadians’ social programs and entitlements.
Singh needs to state clearly that any talk of going beyond NATO’s already outrageous 2% of GDP on the war machine would force the NDP to call for Canada to withdraw from the alliance (the party’s democratically determined position from 1969 until the leadership partially jettisoned it in the late 1980s). The Trudeau government has already increased military spending far too much to please the belligerent US-led military alliance.
It’s even more pressing for Singh to challenge Trump’s attacks on Mexico. Rather than denigrating Mexico like Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Canadian officials should stand with that country as part of its response to Trump’s 25% tariff threats. In fact, Singh should go a step further and reach out to Claudia Scheinbaum’s leftist government to explore an alternative to the neoliberal ‘free trade’ model. If Trump can impose tariffs as part of his reactionary, ‘secure the borders’, politics, why can’t the leader of Canada’s fourth place social democratic party work with Mexico to propose scrapping the neoliberal accord for a deal that centres justice and the environment?
How many potential NDP voters would object to Singh criticizing Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord or his threat to invade Panama? Very few. But Singh is overly committed to ‘respectable’ media focused politics at a time when Trump is saying and doing all manner of wild stuff.
At the president’s inauguration the richest man in the world did a nazi salute. Another one of Trump’s sickeningly wealthy oligarchic guests, Jeff Bezos, owns a company that recently shuttered its Quebec operations because some employees voted to better control their work conditions and push for $26 an hour.
The NDP needs to distinguish itself from the Liberals and Conservatives and one way is to pick a fight with the Donald. Wouldn’t it be good for Singh if Trump responded to his criticism? Or if Elon Musk attacked him?
Liberal Party leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland has hyped Trump’s purported hostility. In an e-mail to her list on Monday headlined “The Plan to step up to Trump” a politician who the US embassy in 2017 labeled an “America first” foreign minister called to “immediately convene an international summit and form an international coalition to coordinate a joint response to challenges to our sovereignty and our economies. We will start with a summit, to be held the day Chrystia is sworn in as prime minister, with the leaders of Mexico, Denmark, Panama, and the President of the European Union.”
Singh should be going much further than Freeland in standing up for Canada and against the Ugly American.
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