Europe can learn much from Justin Trudeau the Trump-tamer

Of all the bizarre images of Donald Trump with other world leaders, the one that looks most like a political remake of Neil Simon’s screen study in male incompatibility, The Odd Couple, is the President alongside Justin Trudeau. From body language to world view, the neighbouring leaders could hardly diverge more.

But Trudeau is turning out to be a skilled Trump handler. The photograph from their summit causing glee in Canada is Trump, who is not inclined to give credit to competitors, pointing admiringly at a wry-looking guest, as he declared him a “great Prime Minister”.

For his part, Trudeau has found neat ways of pointing out at home that he has a devil of a job dealing with a overgrown manchild in the White House, while remaining courteous. “The President makes decisions that surprise people from time to time,” Trudeau said last week. “And that is something we are very much aware of — and very braced for.”

While America touts nation-first politics in shock-jock language, Trudeau’s defence of (relatively) open borders, and cultural as well as political openness, has secured him a global fan base. In Washington, he berated Mexico for its record on crimes against women and pressed for gender imbalances to be addressed in an updated Nafta agreement. Neither commitment would be high on the Trump to-do list. Cannily, Trudeau advances such progressive arguments under the umbrella of Ivanka Trump’s embrace of women’s empowerment, thus skirting clashes with the First Dad.

On the world stage, the First Canadian has a lot to celebrate as he marks his mid-term in office today. His ascendancy in Ottawa and admiration beyond led one Conservative opponent to deem the suave son of a former Liberal leader a “flying unicorn”, immune to the slings and arrows of opposition. The Conservatives have only just fixed on a leader after the Liberal rout two years ago following a bout of infighting over the tone and direction of Conservatism (obviously, this could never occur in the British Tory party).

Now the harder part of Trudeau’s premiership is beginning. A bundle of missteps, some bad luck and the old curse of progressives: not being clear enough about priorities in the long list of ideas he has embraced is causing rumbles.

Canadian politics, if you are used to the Westminster or Washington kind, are a heady mixture of rows that sound familiar — and local specifics, especially language sensitivity and secessionism, which can devour political capital.

One slight that attaches, however unfairly, to a Liberal leader from a moneyed political dynasty is that since the financial crisis, well-heeled politicians must combat the notion that they are distant from the rest of the population.

So Trudeau returned from Washington to face the heat on a tax-reform proposal that hits small businesses, at precisely the moment when his finance minister, Bill Morneau, is under fire for failing to use a blind trust to handle his considerable assets. In a lively detail, it turns out that Morneau used a holding company, with potential legal tax advantages, for his ownership of a French chateau.

Memories of British politicians being hauled over the coals in the expenses affair or for their own tax arrangements spring to mind. By bad luck the story coincides with the government proposing changes to tax codes that hit small business folk.

If Britain has sporadic rows on fracking versus conservation, imagine the scale of that stand-off in a country with the natural resources of Canada.

Oil-producing parts of the country are furious after a cancellation of a planned oil pipeline while Greens claim he has not gone far enough. Trudeau can make a sound case that he is balancing interests: but the calls for him to declare his beliefs less ambiguously are growing louder. Really, he has many of the assets and setbacks of early Blairism — a credible Centre-Left agenda but uncertainty about what matters most to him and what he wants to achieve.

Many of these problems stem from too broad a range of good intentions (a think-tank counted well over 200 pre-office commitments). Implementation has also been patchy. Trudeau has finally broached a dark subject in the country’s story, the large numbers of treatment of indigenous young women and girls who have been mistreated, with blind eyes turned by officialdom. In the same vein as the independent inquiry into child sex abuse in Britain, Canada’s commission has run into organisational troubles, leaving its government under fire. Some of the fixes lie in a party that had been out of power for nearly 10 years getting the hang of running the show in detail — the task of the next two years.

But Trudeau and many beyond Canada who are inspired by him can take comfort from a couple of factors too. One is that although his polling is dented, the likelihood of a second term of Liberal Canada remains stronger than a swift turn back to the Conservatives.

The other is that, as the latest demands for a Nafta shake-up exhibit, the free trade cause needs a charismatic champion. Not just to take on the Right: Trudeau needs to deploy Left-Liberal credentials to explode the myth that free trade is disadvantageous to the poor.

For all his woes, he fits that bill better than any other figure in power, besides an even less tested Emmanuel Macron. He has shown masterful self-control in his dealings with American negotiators making demands on trade arrangements which would impact heavily on Mexico and Canada, making alliances with American business, who are also getting more fearful of the consequences.

True, Trudeau is not the study in perfection that his more breathless European admirers claim. He can be negligent in detail, a bit flippant with sensitivities and he will need a sterner approach to managing his cabinet, to avoid more unnecessary pratfalls.

But the lesson he represents for a disrupted, uncertain Europe is that old liberal battles matter and need fresh verve to conduct. That included dealing with Trump more shrewdly than wailing about him. On that score, the man in Ottawa is Canada’s best export since maple syrup and polite goodwill.

Anne McElvoy is also Senior Editor of The Economist