Ford’s personality well suited to U.S. president
Premier-designAte speAks Trump’s lAnguAge, writes Goldy Hyder.
Given their close personal relationship with Kathleen Wynne and her provincial Liberal party, I suspect Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his senior staff aren’t thrilled that Doug Ford is now the premier-designate of Ontario, but they should be. He’s going to help save NAFTA. Over the course of the past year, the Trudeau government has done an admirable job defending Canadian interests in what has become an increasingly acrimonious trade dispute with the United States.
Trudeau’s best efforts to restore and strengthen our long-standing bilateral ties have faltered. U.S. President Donald Trump has suddenly decided to take offence at the words Trudeau and virtually every Canadian have been saying for 30 years. Canadians have never dealt with anyone quite like Trump — someone who is as acerbic as he is erratic, and whose negotiating style is a product of winner-take-all battles with New York City planning authorities, not the civilized debates at the World Trade Organization. Enter Premier Ford. Doug Ford isn’t Donald Trump, but he “gets” him. As a Toronto city councillor and counsellor to his late brother, Doug Ford has sat across the table from literally dozens of Trump-like developers fighting for better deals.
Ford has said he will stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the prime minister. As premier of Ontario, he’s a natural ambassador for our domestic steel and dairy producers. On a personal level, he is a rare Canadian official who can speak “American” and cajole with gusto.
To date, the NAFTA talks have played out on three levels. First, professional negotiators and technical advisers have worked with their expert counterparts. Second, Freeland has worked with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Mexico’s Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal.
The third level, and the most complicated, has been the negotiations between Trump and Trudeau. Many of their exchanges have taken place on Twitter or in duelling television appearances. It’s mano-a-mano or, more accurately, moose-aelephant.
Ford has the potential to be our elephant in the room. The bad cop to Trudeau’s good cop. The hired muscle who can go down and talk tough. The kind of player who can skate into the corners elbows up and then quip, “It’s business, it’s not personal.” And the timing couldn’t be better. Only a week after Trudeau revealed that Trump wouldn’t even meet with him unless or until Canada acceded to the demands for NAFTA to contain a five-year sunset clause, Trump called him weak and dishonest. I’d bet good money that Ford could finagle a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. I could easily envision Trump and Ford hitting it off and having a laugh or two at Trudeau’s expense before getting down to brass tacks and agreeing on the outline of a deal.
Trudeau’s approach to the Americans has been a textbook example of how two allies should deal with each other in difficult times, but Trump hasn’t read that textbook. Instead, he’s written books like The Art of the Deal, Time to Get Tough and Think Big and Kick Ass. Of course, none of this diminishes the severity of the dispute or the differences of opinions that have evolved on all sides. Ford doesn’t have a greater understanding of the underlying facts than Trudeau, nor does he have a magic solution to NAFTA irritants.
But this goes beyond Trump and Trudeau. Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. secretary of state and legendary diplomat, has consistently warned against world leaders negotiating directly because there’s no higher authority to which they can appeal should they fail. Moreover, Trump has shown that he’s more amenable to dealing with certain people and personalities better than with others. He also appears to be more attuned to people with some measure of celebrity or notoriety, as well as those who can be controversial or polarizing.
So, let’s put Ford on the next flight to Washington. What have we got to lose? Goldy Hyder is the president and CEO of Hill+Knowlton Strategies (Canada).