Trump Broke America — Canada, Japan & EU Are Building the Future Without It | George Will

Trump Broke America — Canada, Japan & EU Are Building the Future Without It | George Will

I want to begin with a moment that many people glanced at in the news but did not fully absorb. A major credit agency after surveying the political and fiscal terrain of the United States downgraded the credit rating of the world’s largest economy. You probably saw the headline and thought of it as one more data point in a year crowded with unsettling numbers. But what far fewer people recognized is that this was not just an accounting adjustment or a bureaucratic rebuke. It was a statement about the fragility of a system that once seemed unshakable and about how political dysfunction accumulated over years can suddenly crystallize into a judgment that reverberates around the world. When I first read it, I found myself thinking not only about the United States, but about the rest of the democratic world, quietly recalibrating its place in a landscape where old assumptions erode faster than institutions can adapt. The rating change was the surface story. The hidden story, the one we are going to walk through together, is the way this kind of institutional signal forces other nations to reconsider where stability truly resides. And you, as a citizen living through this moment, might be wondering what such global recalculations have to do with your own society’s economic prospects or democratic responsibilities. My answer is quite a lot. Because when a pillar trembles, the surrounding architecture inevitably shifts with it. And one of the countries most attuned to that shifting architecture is Canada. So let me lay out what officially happened. A credit downgrade is in its simplest form a judgment about risk. The risk that political gridlock prevents responsible fiscal management. The risk that public institutions are not functioning with the steadiness expected of them. the risk that long-term commitments may be undermined by short-term theatrics. Credit agencies are not moral arbiters, but they do read the political temperature and they interpret recurring brinkmanship over budgets, debt ceilings, and governance as indicators of deeper structural distress. The United States for generations treated as the anchor of global finance received a signal that its institutions are no longer assumed to be self-correcting. To understand why that matters, we need to take one step back. For much of the post-war era, the world could place its economic bets on a single premise. That American governance, for all its partisan quarrels, would eventually converge on stability. That presumption allowed countries to tie their futures to the United States with a confidence bordering on habit. But institutions are not merely symbols. They are systems of incentives, responsibilities, and constraints. When those begin to fray, when basic budgetary functions become recurring national dramas, the world notices and it adjusts. That is the context in which Canada’s emerging partnerships with Japan and the European Union become far more than trade arrangements or diplomatic nicities. As you consider your own economic future, you may be tempted to see these alliances as technocratic matters distant from daily life. Yet they speak directly to the question of what kind of world your country will inhabit as economic gravity disperses and geopolitical trust becomes a rarer commodity. Japan, a nation that has historically prized predictability and institutional discipline, is making long-term moves that reflect a search for reliability in a world where reliability is suddenly in short supply. Japan’s leaders, after years of studying the vulnerabilities exposed by supply chain turmoil and geopolitical pressure, concluded that efficiency alone could no longer be the central metric of economic strategy. What they sought instead was dependability. And when they scanned the democratic world for a partner capable of offering it, not merely in resources, but in governance, they saw Canada. If you have ever wondered how a political culture that prizes moderation, transparency, and steady administration translates into global influence, the answer is found here. Nations invest not only in minerals, hydrogen, or manufacturing capacity. They invest in systems they trust will not collapse under the weight of their own polarization. This is why Japan is not making short-term trades, but long-term wages measured not in quarters, but in decades. These investments are signals as much as they are transactions. They say that Canada offers something increasingly rare, a political environment where institutions function without recurrent existential crisis. And that in turn shapes the economic possibilities that will define your working life, your community’s prospects, and the broader question of what role your country will play in an era when global influence no longer rests solely on military strength or market size, but on the credibility of governance itself. As I think about this shift, I find myself returning to a point that is easy to overlook. Political stability when paired with institutional competence becomes a form of national capital. It is not measured on balance sheets. Yet, it shapes the decisions of investors, governments, and entire industries. And Japan’s recalibration illustrates this vividly. For them, the question was not simply where minerals could be sourced or where factories could be built. The real question was where long-term commitments would not be threatened by sudden regulatory lurches or legislative gridlock. In other words, who can be trusted to manage the future with care? When I speak to you about the deeper story behind the headlines, this is what I mean. Nations are no longer only choosing partners based on capacity. They are choosing based on confidence. And therein lies a truth I want you to sit with for a moment. Canada may not have the world’s largest economy or its largest population, but in an era defined by uncertainty, it has something uniquely valuable. The ability to anchor complex economic systems with predictable governance. That is not a small thing. It is in fact the very characteristic that allowed countries like Japan to flourish in the latter half of the 20th century. Stable democracies create stable expectations and stable expectations allow societies to plan, build and innovate across multiple generations. When Japan looks to Canada now, it recognizes a polity capable of sustaining that kind of strategic consistency. Let us step further into the mechanics of how this works. Consider the supply chains that underpin everything from electric vehicles to renewable energy systems. These are not simply industrial networks. They are institutional arrangements built on trust. A mineral produced in northern Canada, refined in Japan, integrated into machinery, and shipped across oceans depends on hundreds of points of cooperation, each requiring reliability from the last. If even one partner becomes erratic, the chain weakens. Yet, if the chain is built on democracies that share not just interests but values, transparency, rule of law, steady administration, then the entire network becomes more resilient. That is the logic driving Japan’s investments. You may be wondering how this relates to Europe and why the second pillar of Canada’s strategy matters as much as the first. To see this clearly, we need to shift from the physical economy to the regulatory one. Europe is not searching for minerals or energy security in quite the same way Japan is. Europe is searching for something else. A framework for governing the technologies that will define this century. Artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, data security, algorithmic accountability. These are domains where rules shape reality as much as any physical resource does. And Europe with its sweeping regulatory architecture has positioned itself as the standard setter for much of the democratic world. But here is where Canada’s opportunity becomes extraordinary. When a country aligns with the most comprehensive regulatory system in the democratic sphere, it gains something subtle but powerful. First mover advantage. If you are an entrepreneur building an AI tool or a policymaker designing oversight mechanisms, the question you must answer is not only what works in your own market, but what will be trusted in the world’s major democratic blocks? If Canada’s standards harmonize with Europe’s, then Canadian companies are equipped not merely for domestic approval, but for a continental market built on shared principles. The effect is simple and profound. Compliance becomes a competitive edge. This is not theoretical. It shapes the incentives of creators, engineers, and firms across the country. Imagine you are leading a startup that is building a system for medical diagnostics using machine learning. You want clarity about what counts as ethical design, what obligations you have to users, what transparency standards you must meet, and what oversight you must build in from the beginning. Europe has answered those questions with more rigor than any other region. By aligning with those answers, Canada gives its own innovators the gift of regulatory certainty. And as you may know from your own experience navigating institutions, clarity about the rules is often more valuable than the freedom to operate without them. What this creates is not just partnership, but alignment. Japan provides the material backbone of a more diversified and resilient economic future. Europe provides the ethical and regulatory scaffolding of a technological one. and Canada quietly but deliberately positions itself at the confluence of both. If you have ever wondered how middle powers shape world orders without dominating them, this is the example to study. Influence is not always exercised through might. Sometimes it is exercised through reliability. And reliability in a fractured century is a form of leadership. As the pieces of this picture come together, I want to walk you through the institutional incentives that allowed this moment to take shape. Nations do not drift into strategic partnerships by accident. They arrived there through a combination of structural pressures, political choices, and long-term patterns of trust. Japan, for instance, did not wake up one morning and decide to diversify away from old dependencies. It was pushed there by disruptions that revealed the fragility of systems once considered invulnerable. A pandemic stretching supply lines to their breaking point, geopolitical assertiveness reshaping regional balances, and the spectacle of legislative dysfunction in a country long thought to be the anchor of global economic order. When you put those forces together, the question for Japan was no longer whether change was necessary, but where that change should lead. At the same time, Europe confronted a different but parallel challenge. As artificial intelligence and digital technologies advanced with dizzying speed, policymakers realized that regulatory frameworks built for an earlier age were wholly inadequate. To govern technologies capable of reshaping economies, democracies needed to articulate not only what they wished to prevent, but what values they wish to advance. Europe began investing in regulatory structures that emphasized human oversight, privacy, transparency, and accountability. Now, these principles may sound abstract at first, but they have deeply practical implications for your daily life. How your data is used, how automated decisions affect your opportunities, and how public institutions ensure that technology serves democratic ends rather than undermining them. Canada enters this story because the incentives it faces mirror those of its partners. It too recognized the vulnerabilities of over reliance on a single market. It too saw the risks inherent in a technological future without guard rails. And it too understood that stability is not merely the absence of chaos but the presence of institutions capable of managing complexity. You may sometimes hear the suggestion that Canada’s political calm makes it a bystander rather than a protagonist in global affairs. But calm is not passivity. It is the operating condition of durable institutions. And durable institutions make long-term strategy possible. To appreciate how these dynamics converge, let us step inside the mechanisms of governance that shape economic reality. Consider how a critical minerals project gets approved, financed, and built. It requires regulatory clarity, environmental standards that are predictable, local consent that is respected, and long-term capital that trusts the rules will not shift midstream. These are institutional virtues, and Canada has them in greater abundance than many nations that are larger or louder on the world stage. This, more than anything, is what Japan is investing in. They are betting that the systems Canada has built over decades will remain intact through elections, policy debates, and global shocks. Europe’s calculation is similar, though expressed in a different domain. When European policymakers look abroad for partners in shaping the technological norms of the future, they need countries whose legal culture is compatible with their own. If you have ever tried to coordinate a project across multiple agencies or organizations, you know how essential shared assumptions are. The same is true at the international level. If two democracies agree on what transparency means, what privacy entails, and how oversight should function, they can build regulatory frameworks that endure beyond the personalities of leaders or the mood of any given election cycle. This is the foundation upon which the Canada EU digital alignment rests. You may be asking yourself who the central actors are in this story and how much responsibility they bear for its direction. The truth is that leadership matters, but not in the way political rhetoric often suggests. Individual policymakers, ministers, or diplomats can accelerate or hinder progress. But the core of these partnerships is institutional rather than personal. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry is operating on long-term strategy, not the impulses of a single leader. The European Union’s regulatory agencies are implementing years of deliberation, not sudden ideological whims. And Canadian institutions, from provincial governments to national regulatory bodies, are contributing stability through bureaucratic competence rather than theatrical pronouncements. This does not mean personalities are irrelevant. It simply means they are framed by structures that guide them toward certain decisions and away from others. For instance, when Canadian officials negotiate with their Japanese counterparts, they do so within processes designed to encourage transparency, predictability, and multi-year planning. These structures shape outcomes more powerfully than any one individual’s preferences. In a time when global politics often seems dominated by personalities, it is useful for you to see that systems still matter, arguably more than ever. And this brings us to a broader consequence that affects you whether or not you follow international politics closely. The deepening of Canada’s partnerships with Japan and the European Union is building a diversified economic and technological architecture that will shape job markets, energy systems, innovation ecosystems, and national security for decades. These are not elite abstractions. They influence the industries available in your region, the reliability of your supply chains, the standards governing the technology you use daily, and the opportunities that future generations will inherit. As we reach the end of this discussion, I want to widen the lens just enough for you to see the deeper structural point that ties all of this together. What Canada is experiencing right now is not merely a fortunate convergence of international interest. It is a restructuring of the global order in which middle powers with dependable institutions become indispensable. That is the hidden architecture beneath the headlines about downgrades, partnerships, and trade agreements. A world once organized around a single economic gravitational center is redistributing its weight. And in the spaces created by that redistribution, countries that cultivate stability, predictability, and democratic trust find themselves rising in strategic value. This moment, however, carries responsibilities as well as opportunities. When a nation becomes a provider of reliability, it must maintain the qualities that earned that trust in the first place. That means investing in infrastructure capable of supporting new industries in regulatory systems that can adapt without lurching and in a civic culture that understands the importance of institutional integrity. If you have ever worked in an organization that suddenly became essential to a larger network, you know that the pressure increases along with the prestige. Canada is entering such a phase and the choices it makes now will determine whether these partnerships become the foundation of long-term national strength or simply a fleeting episode of global attention. There is also within this realignment a human story that deserves acknowledgement. Every shift in supply chains affects workers and communities. Every change in technological regulation influences entrepreneurs, researchers, and families navigating the digital world. Behind the abstractions of credit ratings and geopolitical calculations are people whose futures depend on whether institutions rise to the challenges before them. If you are someone working in the energy sector, these Japanese investments may determine the next decade of your opportunities. If you are building a tech company or studying machine learning, Europe’s regulatory framework may shape the standards you must meet. And if you are a citizen who depends on stable governance, all of this matters because it reinforces the value of the democratic system you help uphold. As we reflect on this, I think it is important to resist the temptation to view these developments as inevitable. They are not. They are the result of choices made by actors within institutions that remain capable of long-term thinking. They demonstrate that even in a polarized world, some democracies still have the capacity to plan beyond the next election cycle. And they remind us that reliability, far from being a dull virtue, is one of the most powerful assets a nation can possess. When the global credit shock forced countries to reassess their dependencies, the nations that stood out were not necessarily the biggest or the boldest, but those whose institutions still functioned with quiet competence. This, in many ways, is the lesson I hope you carry from our conversation. Canada’s closer ties with Japan and the European Union are not merely diplomatic developments. They are signals of a world searching for steadiness and of a country demonstrating that such steadiness can be cultivated and sustained. That is not to say the path ahead will be without difficulty. Every alliance brings obligations, every opportunity brings scrutiny, and every moment of geopolitical transition brings uncertainty. But it does mean that Canada has entered a position where its decisions carry greater weight. Not because it demanded influence but because it earned trust. So I leave you with this final thought. As institutions around the world grapple with change, each of us is challenged to think about what kind of democratic culture we wish to preserve and what role we want our country to play within the shifting global order. You may find yourself encouraged by these partnerships or cautious or simply curious about what comes next. Whatever your position, the essential question is what values you believe should guide this new chapter. That is a conversation worth having, not only in comment sections or political debates, but in the civic life you help shape. If you found this analysis helpful, I hope you will stay engaged with these discussions. Consider liking or subscribing so we can continue examining how politics, history, and institutions intersect and what they mean for your future. And I invite you to share your perspective below. After all, democracy is strengthened not only by stable institutions, but by informed citizens willing to think together about the world they are inheriting and

Is the era of American global leadership officially over? In this sharp critique, conservative commentator George Will argues that Donald Trump’s isolationist “America First” policies have shattered the post-WWII order, forcing America’s oldest allies—Canada, Japan, and the European Union—to forge a new future without the United States.

From the “rupture” in US-Canada relations to Europe’s push for strategic autonomy, we break down how the world is moving on while Washington turns inward. Are we witnessing the end of the American Century?

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🔍 In This Video:
The “Rupture” with Canada: Why recent tariff threats and diplomatic insults have pushed Ottawa to pivot away from its reliance on the US economy.

The End of Alliances: How the EU and Japan are actively building new trade frameworks and defense strategies that exclude Washington.

Conservative Critique: George Will’s argument on why true conservatism cherishes alliances—and why Trump’s populism is a dangerous departure.

The Post-American World: What a global economy looks like when the US dollar and US military are no longer the ultimate guarantors of stability.

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