RESEARCH ARTICLE / ÉTUDE ORIGINALE Canada in the North America Region: Implications of the Trump Presidency Laura Macdonald* Department of Political Science and Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, B640 Loeb Building, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6 *Corresponding author. Email: laura.macdonald@carleton.ca Abstract The election of Donald Trump and his decision to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) represented a shock to the Canadian and Mexican govern- ments and business elites. Drawing on the New Regionalism(s) Approach (NRA), this article reviews the response of the Canadian state to the crisis in the North American regional project. I argue that this newer theoretical approach better explains the dynamics of regionalization or regional decomposition than mainstream theories by integrating the role played by uneven globalization, normative and ideational dimensions, and civil soci- ety in processes of regional integration and/or decomposition. Résumé L’élection de Donald Trump et sa décision de renégocier l’ALENA ont représenté un choc pour les gouvernements et les élites commerciales du Canada et du Mexique. S’inspirant de la nouvelle approche régionaliste (ARN), cet article examine la réponse de l’État canadien à la crise qui a frappé le projet régional nord-américain. Je soutiens que cette approche théorique plus récente rend mieux compte de la dynamique de la régionalisation ou de la décomposition régionale que les théories classiques en intégrant le rôle joué par la mondi- alisation inégale, les dimensions normatives et conceptuelles et la société civile dans les proc- essus d’intégration et/ou de décomposition régionale. Keywords: NAFTA; USMCA; regionalism; Trump; trade Mots-clés : ALENA; ACEUM; régionalisme; Trump; commerce Even before the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the state of the North American region was complicated and uncertain. On the one hand, there seemed to exist wide consensus among economists, Canadian political and economic elites and (to a lesser extent) the general public that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had delivered impressive economic benefits. Global Affairs Canada points out on its website that total merchandise trade among the three partners (Canada, the United States and Mexico) has tripled since 1993, the year before © Canadian Political Science Association (l’Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 2020 Canadian Journal of Political Science (2020), 1–16 doi:10.1017/S0008423920000219 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423920000219 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 184.144.100.201, on 28 Jul 2020 at 17:04:45, subject to the Cambridge Core