Americans have more favourable views on free trade and immigration than before Trump's presidency.Julia Demaree Nikhinson/The Associated Press
I feel perhaps I have been unfair to Donald Trump. Regular readers will know that he has been the subject of the occasional reproof in these corners. Among other things, it has been suggested that he is insane, incompetent, corrupt, treasonous, bottomlessly ignorant, easily manipulated, a Batman villain, and a modern-day Nero: possessed of every vice, devoid of every virtue.
Well, it’s easy to be a critic. Missing from these jeremiads has been any accounting of all the good things that are happening in the world because of Mr. Trump. Yes, I said it: good things. Perhaps it was Trump Derangement Syndrome that blinded me to his achievements. Perhaps it was only my foolish pride. But it is time to right the balance, to confess error and atone.
For example, I have entirely failed to report on the extraordinary, and encouraging, shifts in U.S. public opinion since Mr. Trump returned to the presidency. These are most pronounced on two of his signature issues: trade and immigration.
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On trade, Americans have become markedly more pro-free trade. Fully 65 per cent of Americans now say that free trade agreements are “a good way to create economic growth in America,” versus 59 per cent in 2024 and 41 per cent in 2016. Nearly half (46 per cent) of Americans now favour a “no restrictions” trade policy. Fewer than a third said the same in early 2024. If the World Trade Organization were to meet in Seattle today, there’d be no protesters.
The trend is even more pronounced when it comes to immigration. A record-high 79 per cent of Americans describe immigration as a “good thing … for this country today,” up from 64 per cent in 2024.
If we are honest, credit for these remarkable shifts has to go to one man: Donald Trump. Two centuries-plus of economists’ proselytizing on the virtues of free trade have not had half the same effect as one crazy tyrant.
It was easy to grouse about trade or immigration in the abstract, that is in the absence of anything to compare them to. It was Mr. Trump’s singular achievement to show Americans what the alternatives look like. Americans have had a taste of high tariffs and mass deportations, and their response is no, thank you.
Mr. Trump has had the same educational effect abroad. Right-wing nationalist populism was on the rise everywhere, for a time. But continued exposure to its most prominent global advocate, and his record in office – the on-again, off-again trade wars, the Greenland fiasco, the Iran war – has done more than any amount of progressive hand-wringing to discredit it.
A tag reads 'Liar Fidesz' over a poster of outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister and Fidesz leader Viktor Orban at a bus stop in Budapest, Hungary one day after general elections.FERENC ISZA/AFP/Getty Images
The most visible example, of course, was the demise of Viktor Orbán at the hands of the voters in Hungary’s recent election. Many things contributed to his defeat, but it would be grossly unfair not to mention the critical role played by Mr. Trump’s explicit and repeated endorsement of Mr. Orbán, directly and through his Vice-President, JD Vance.
Mr. Orbán was the exception in being foolish enough to seek it. But even an atmospheric association with Mr. Trump has proved electorally poisonous, as Pierre Poilievre can attest. Result: All across Europe, nat-pop leaders are rushing to distance themselves from Mr. Trump, for fear of being caught in the undertow of his odium. Parties that once hailed Mr. Trump as a kind of patron saint – Germany’s AfD, France’s National Rally, Britain’s Reform UK – now avoid all mention of him, when they are not openly critical.
Few presidents in American history have had this kind of influence. One day it may be said of him that he saved European democracy.
But it is his contributions to world trade and international security that may prove to be Mr. Trump’s greatest legacy. His efforts to blow up the global trade regime – pulling out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, threatening to pull out of NAFTA, imposing double- and triple-digit tariffs on virtually every country on Earth, then using these to extort payments of various kinds from each, only to renege on the one-sided “deals” after a short while – have instead had the opposite effect.
Nature is healing. Having seen the folly of attempting to buy trade peace with Mr. Trump, the world’s major economies have begun to trade around him, concluding a series of far-reaching free-trade deals with one another rather than submit to the President’s efforts to “monetize the relationship.”
Some of these had been under negotiation for years or even decades. But it was the need to find new trade partners in the face of Mr. Trump’s impulsive imperiousness that finally and suddenly clinched the deals. One after the other the agreements have fallen into place, laying the foundations for a whole new international trade order in the space of a few months.
This is very much in line with the message of Mark Carney’s Davos speech: middle powers reducing their dependence on, and therefore vulnerability to, the great powers by forming closer trade associations with each other.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy discuss the situation in Ukraine during the 8th European Political Community Summit.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
But if Mr. Carney’s speech was the theory, Europe is the practice. Some of the biggest deals, covering hundreds of millions of people, have been driven by the European Union: with the Mercosur group of South American countries; with India; with Indonesia; with Australia. A deal with the Trans-Pacific Partnership is also in the works. Meantime negotiations on a comprehensive free trade deal with the United States, once considered inevitable, remain moribund. Few think they will revive any time soon.
India has also been active, signing deals with the European Free Trade Association group of countries (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein) and Britain. Canada is scrambling to keep pace, with agreements said to be close with Mercosur, India and the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) group, as well as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Coupled with our existing agreements with the United States (fingers crossed), the European Union, and the TPP, this places us squarely at the crossroads of international trade.
And we owe it all to Mr. Trump. Had Mr. Trump not behaved with quite such recklessness, had he been even slightly less unpredictable or a shade less untrustworthy, none of this would be happening.
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Something of the same miracle is occurring on the defence front. The various members of NATO, it is well known, are in the throes of a long-delayed and much-needed rearmament. In Canada’s case this implies a nearly four-fold increase in defence spending over the next decade.
This is sometimes attributed to Mr. Trump’s jawboning and threats to leave NATO, which he evidently views not as a defensive alliance but as a kind of protection racket.
But in truth it has more to do with Vladimir Putin than Mr. Trump. As the Russian dictator’s territorial ambitions have grown, from Georgia to Crimea to the whole of Ukraine, it has become harder to sustain the illusion that mere membership in NATO was enough to insulate a country from attack, any more than non-alignment has proved to be. Fortified by its Baltic and Nordic members – those most exposed to Russian aggression – NATO has collectively been seized with the necessity of rearming, and would have been, with or without Mr. Trump’s prodding.
The Trump administration's lack of criticism of Russian aggression in Ukraine has compelled other NATO countries to talk of creating another military alliance.Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
On the other hand, would Mr. Putin be anything like as provocative had Mr. Trump not essentially given him the green light? At summit meetings, in public statements, at the UN, Mr. Trump and his administration have taken every opportunity to side with the Russian leader, have rarely criticized him, have not only offered no serious opposition to Russian expansion but on occasion have seemed to invite it.
The reasons for this may be speculated at, but the Europeans have concluded that they cannot rely on Mr. Trump living up to the United States’s obligations under Article 5 of the NATO charter – the collective defence provision – in the event of a Russian attack. Indeed, as many have noted, the most serious threat to the territory of a NATO member in recent times has come from Mr. Trump himself, in the matter of Greenland (and, depending on how you interpret things, Canada).
With NATO effectively dead, all sorts of possibilities arise. There is talk of a common European army being formed. Or of an Alliance of the Democracies: NATO minus the United States but plus Japan, South Korea, Australia and others, combining defence and trade responsibilities, as in the proposal for an “economic Article 5” (wherein a tariff on one would be regarded as a tariff on all, to be retaliated against accordingly).
It’s a dangerous time, but also a creative, liberating one. Under threat on all sides, the democracies are discovering a new vigour, a new unity, a new determination to be masters of their own fate. And to whom do we owe the credit for this new energy? Why, to Donald Trump, of course. Had he been even slightly reliable as an ally – had he not, in fact, behaved more like an adversary – then we would still be locked in the same stalemate as before.
But as it is! It is entirely possible that Mr. Trump’s grotesque obsequiousness toward Mr. Putin may have tempted him into fatally overreaching, believing that with Mr. Trump’s acquiescence Ukraine’s defeat was inevitable. Instead it is Ukraine that is gaining the upper hand, and Mr. Putin’s fate that looks increasingly dark. Should Mr. Trump succeed, by his unique mix of weakness, gullibility and venality, in ridding the world of Mr. Putin, I will have no choice but to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.