Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is headed to Washington, D.C. this week to meet with President Barack Obama.

Carlo Dade, Director of the Centre for Trade & Investment Policy, offers three reasons why this visit is different.

1) Pent up demand

There has been a sense that the bi-lateral relationship, and the larger NAFTA/North American project, have been on hold.

On the one hand the public and business community are fed a steady diet of “integrated supply chains” and “$2.4 billion a day in goods crosses the border” while on the other hand we have North American leaders’ summits canceled, pipelines not approved and beef not crossing the border.

We look to the leaders, not the day-to-day functioning of the underlying architecture and infrastructure, which is largely working just fine, to reassure ourselves that everything is okay. The importance of the relationship between the leaders isn’t important to the maintenance of the relationship, rather, it’s critical for the growth of the relationship.

Absent a good crisis to compel action, a good comfortable relationship between the leaders is the ideal midwife for bold new ideas and initiatives. And that’s what’s in the air in Washington this week.

2) Three hundred days

That’s roughly how much time Obama has left in office and that’s the window of opportunity for launching new ideas and initiatives. We have a U.S. president who is well into working on his legacy and who has evinced a willingness, without remorse, to stick it to the U.S. congress in order to get things he wants.

The extreme polarization in D.C. rules out compromise and encourages rather than disciplines the President’s willingness to go the executive action route. In 300 days he will not have to deal with the Congress – and the voters who will be offended by his taking the executive action route to bypass Congress aren’t going to vote Democrat anyway. This opportunity for getting things done will disappear with a new occupant in the White House and there is an awful lot that a president can do under executive order.

The Softwood Lumber Agreement, for example, falls into that category. This executive order scenario also works for Hillary Clinton, who can shake her head in mock disapproval, disavow what Obama has done and feign resignation to a fait acompli as she reaps the benefits of his actions. It also works for Donald Trump to further incite his base.

3) North American Leaders’ summit (NALS)

The results of this meeting will not appear until this summer at the North American Leaders’ summit (NALS), which will take place this summer in Canada and should be formally announced this week in D.C. While there will be a few announcements from the meeting this week, the major outcomes will appear in the announcements after the NALS.

That Trudeau has managed to get relations with Mexico back on track creates a new world of possibilities for joint North American action on a file that is personally important to each leader – climate change and green technology. While having an energy and environment accord with Canada is nice, if one is thinking “legacy,” then a “hemispheric accord” has a much more weighty, profound and “legacy-like” ring to it.

Mexico has been a leader, verbally at least, on climate change issues in North America and the Mexicans have spent the past couple of years waiting for some sign of life and interest in “North American” projects from the other two amigos. As much as Obama and Trudeau may egg each other along on the environment file in Washington, it will be nothing compared to having Mexican President Pena Nieto in the mix. We’ve already had a glimpse of what is possible at the summit of North American energy ministers in Winnipeg last month. We can expect to see more of that come out of the NALS this summer. And the basis for that begins this week in D.C. as Obama and Trudeau get to know each other.

 

But, for whatever comes out of this visit and the leaders’ summit this summer, the clock is ticking. Once a new president and congress take office it’s going to be a while until, or depending on the US election outcome, if, it opens again.

– Carlo Dade is Director of the Centre for Trade & Investment Policy