The United States Presidential Election is right around the corner, with election day less than two months away. Tonight at 9 p.m. former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet face to face on the debate stage for the first time. XFM News reached out to local political experts on how the coming election will affect Londoners.
“Probably the biggest issue in terms of whether Trump or Harris gets elected is one of the campaign promises of Donald Trump to implement anywhere from a 10 to 20 per cent tariff on all incoming goods into the United States,” Fanshawe College politics professor Glen Morgan remarked in an interview.
“If Trump does win the presidency, that could have a huge economic impact on Canada and as some economists look at it, potentially devastating. The United States is Canada’s biggest export partner, we send more goods there than anywhere else and if things suddenly had a 10 or 20 per cent tariff on them, that could be very harmful to Canadian companies.” Morgan went on to say.
Sam Routley, a PhD candidate, researcher and writer with Western University also spoke to XFM about potential impacts of the coming election.
“The US is not only one of the largest and most powerful countries in the world but it’s our number one trading partner. A lot of our real economic and military strength and capability is intimately tied with the US.” Routley said, “When it comes to Londoners specifically, you know Londoners like a lot of other Canadians are very close to the border, which means sort of those economic links are particularly salient.”
Routley went on to say that regardless of the next U.S. president, upon the renegotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in 2026, Canada would likely see more aggressive negotiations from the next administration.
“The interesting thing about the two candidates here is their sort of broader economic objectives are quite similar. They are both looking to renew this real American industrial capability. What’s happened in both previous administrations whether we’re talking about Trump or Biden is you’ve seen governments that are very willing to enact a lot of this economic intervention, particularly tariffs, to sort of create the conditions conducive towards those industries.” Routley continued.
Ahead of the debate, Harris is currently polling at 2.8 points above Trump, according to FiveThirtyEight. Election day in the U.S. will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
