Trump: how we got here

“How did this happen?”

Many Canadians asked themselves that this morning in the wake of a largely unexpected Donald Trump victory.

“The polls didn’t predict it and neither did the pundits,” writes Jonathan Gatehouse for Macleans.ca. “The Republicans’ own key advisors had been quietly telling reporters that they expected him to lose—badly.”

That’s not what happened. Trump took at least 276 Electoral College votes, while Hillary Clinton only received 218 — although with nearly 125 million votes counted, The Associated Press tally has Clinton with 47.7% of the popular vote and President-elect Donald Trump with 47.5%.

As Gatehouse writes, “America will elect a female president, someday. But it won’t be Hillary Clinton.”

Gatehouse’s story charts the rise of Trump, saying that the U.S. “has cleaved in ways that seems far more ominous. Trump’s victory was sealed through the overwhelming support of white, working-class men in rural America and big city exurbs. And it was the result of a campaign that alienated many women, all minorities, and even the traditional power brokers within his own party.” Read the full story here.

That alienation came at the expense of facts. “From the start of the campaign there was a war on facts and the primary aggressor was Donald Trump,” writes Evan Solomon for Macleans.ca. “Clinton told lies about her emails, and she dissembled on policy positions like trade, but those pale beside Trump. The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale admirably chronicled Trump’s daily fusillade of falsehoods from September to Election Day and found 560 false claims, which, as Dale wrote, is a ‘neat 20 a day.’ ”

Solomon goes on to examine the deep divides between America’s rich and poor, and how that led to Trump’s election. Read the full story here.

It was those divides that led Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital, to predict as early as April that Trump would win.

“There’s not enough global growth to go around,” Gundlach said at a seminar in Toronto. “When you have 2% global growth, the good [countries] are up at 5% and the bad [countries] are at -1%. When you have negative [growth], people are unhappy, and they want you to do something.” And Trump said he would do something: end what he considers bad trade deals and bring jobs back to America. “He’s going to build a wall. […] He also says he’s going to build up the U.S. military. There’s going to be a lot of deficit spending.”

What does all this mean for Canada? The oilpatch, softwood lumber and trade in general will all be affected. And CIBC portfolio manager Stephen Carlin told us last month that companies with exposure to military spend in Canada could do well. He mentioned CAE Inc., a Montreal-based aerospace company, as an example.

And finally, for those those who think a Trump-esque win couldn’t happen here, it turns out the Donald has at least one prominent supporter: Kellie Leitch. Leitch, who’s running for leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, sent supporters an email last night calling Trump’s victory “an exciting message and one that we need delivered in Canada as well.”

Staff

The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.