“Will Biden’s Second State of the Union Mark a New Era of Closer Canada-US Relations?”
WASHINGTON — A new poll suggests that a majority of Canadians still view the United States as their country’s closest ally, even in times of isolationism and protectionist policies.
Leger’s online poll for the Association for Canadian Studies found that 69 percent of respondents still consider the US to be Canada’s best friend, while 31 percent said they disagreed or didn’t know.
However, Canadians appear to be more divided on whether the US is having a positive impact on international affairs: 41 percent of respondents disagreed with this statement, compared to 38 percent who said they believe it is true.
The poll comes as US President Joe Biden prepares to deliver his State of the Union address tonight, his second since becoming president in 2021.
Canadian business leaders say they will watch for a softer tone from Biden on the protectionist rhetoric that marked his first two years in the White House.
Biden is likely to take a hard line on China, and many are upset because Chinese officials insist it was a weather balloon that drifted through Canadian and US airspace.
The incident, which ended on Sunday with US jet fighters blasting the balloon out of the sky, gives the president a perfect excuse to highlight the importance of economic decoupling from China, said Flavio Volpe, president of the Canadian Association of Auto Parts Manufacturers.
But it would be a mistake to assume that the US will automatically turn to Canada for its energy, raw materials and manufactured goods, Volpe said.
“Canada will do well not to assume we’re in the tent. We will have to prove and blame ourselves on many points that we take for granted,” he said.
“Look for a transactional language to dominate our relationship rather than an ideology. Shared values are important, but sharing values is more important.”
The president has moved away from the “introspection” that characterized the first two years of his presidency, said Louise Blais, a retired Canadian envoy who now serves as senior adviser to the Business Council of Canada and diplomat-in-residence at Laval- University of Quebec.
“As of that year, actually, the narrative he uses when he addresses the issues surrounding economic security and supply chains has really changed,” Blais said.
“After two tough years … we’re now starting to see a different approach — at least rhetorically. He speaks about the importance of working with America’s continental allies.”
Recent polls suggest that Biden has not registered with ordinary Americans the success he has had in pulling the US economy out of the post-pandemic quagmire.
A new poll released Monday by ABC News and the Washington Post found that 62 percent of respondents believed Biden had accomplished “not very much” or “little or nothing” in the first half of his tenure, compared with 36 Percent who believe the opposite.
And that’s despite a slew of signature wins, including $1.2 trillion in infrastructure spending, the sweeping health, tax and climate change spending package known as the Inflation Reduction Act, and billions to build domestic manufacturing.
Fresh jobs numbers reported on Friday also painted a different picture, with the economy adding a remarkable 517,000 jobs in the last month alone, bringing the country’s unemployment rate down to just 3.4 percent.
Brian Deese, Biden’s outgoing director of the National Economic Council, acknowledged Monday that the full impact of the administration’s efforts has yet to be fully felt, in part because Biden is focused on building a fairer “bottom-up” and To create “middle-out” recovery.
Deese described a recent spate of new startups and self-employment efforts as a source of hope “because people don’t do it unless they think there’s opportunity in the economy for the future.”
This activity also serves as “an enormous source of potential dynamism for our economy,” he added, “that we need to make sure we don’t fall back into a pre-pandemic equilibrium of low growth, low wage increases and rising inequality.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was among those dispatched from the White House to sing the praises of Biden’s economic plan ahead of the President’s speech.
“We’re investing in America again … Factories are opening up across America, and not just on the coast, but across the country in areas that haven’t seen the investments they need,” Yellen said Monday during an appearance at ABC “Good Morning America.”
A US recession is unlikely, she said, given strong January jobs reports, the lowest unemployment rate in 53 years and inflation continuing to fall.
One of the only wild cards would be if Republicans on Capitol Hill, led by newly elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy, carry out an ongoing threat to default the US by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, she added.
“America has paid all of its bills on time since 1789, and failure to do so would result in economic and financial disaster,” Yellen said.
“It’s something that just can’t be negotiable, and while we’ve gone to the wire at times, Congress has always recognized its responsibility (and) must do it again.”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on February 7, 2023.
James McCarten, The Canadian Press
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