Trump plans to run on economic record
WASHINGTON • President Donald Trump declared his scorched-earth political style an unmitigated success Tuesday in a state of the union speech that made it clear he expects to be back in the White House next year on the strength of the U.S. economy and his trade deals with Canada, Mexico and China.
Trump, addressing a joint session of Congress in the very chamber where House Democrats voted to impeach him less than two months ago, became only the second president in American history — Bill Clinton was the first — to deliver a state of the union while standing trial in the Senate.
Trump pointedly refused to shake the offered hand of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the dais before singing the praises of what he billed as “the great American comeback,” pointing to strong job growth, a soaring stock market and low unemployment as evidence of his leadership.
“America’s enemies are on the run, America’s fortunes are on the rise, and America’s future is blazing bright. The years of economic decay are over,” Trump declared.
Trump took full credit for the “roaring economy,” including what he claimed as seven million new jobs and the lowest jobless rate in half a century.
One half of the lawmakers in the chamber rose to applaud his every sentence. Democrats sat stone-faced.
He took credit for replacing the “unfair NAFTA trade deal” with USMCA, blaming it for the loss of one in four manufacturing jobs over the course of that agreement’s 26-year life.
“I keep my promises,” he said. “We did our job.”
On tariffs, the president’s preferred lever for prying favourable conditions out of trading partners and allies, “our strategy has worked,” he insisted.
Perrin Beatty, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said he was hoping to hear evidence of stability on the trade file, as well as details of the socalled second phase of a trade deal with China, although he admitted Monday he wasn’t holding his breath.
Even with the replacement deal for NAFTA now largely complete, pending ratification in the House of Commons, Canadian industry is smarting from how it was treated during the negotiations, the former PC cabinet minister said in an interview.
Canadians had every reason to expect the talks to reflect the importance of the relationship between the two countries.
“Instead, what we saw was an approach ... (that) treated Canada and Mexico as if they were the enemy, rather than partners, and the approach was zero-sum. It wasn’t, ‘If we get a good deal, everyone can win,’ it was, ‘One of us can win only if the others lose,”’ Beatty said.