Trudeau U.S. visit delivers wake-up call about new North American reality

The helicopter buzzing overhead was just one symbolic example during Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's trip to Washington of a tough new reality Canadians face.

Trudeau's failure to persuade Americans to ease up on Canada in a landmark electric-vehicle plan capped a visit that served a long, loud wake-up call to this new reality. 

Former U.S. president Donald Trump's protectionist impulses were no aberration: This era is vastly different era from the one that produced the 1965 Auto Pact and spurred decades of Canada-U.S. economic integration. 

Our challenge now involves living beside a worried superpower that's distracted by generational challenges in which Canada is at best a bit player.

The point was driven home at a swanky hotel overlooking the White House, where Trudeau had just delivered a speech about the precious bond between our two countries.

A green and white helicopter soon appeared on the horizon, and drifted slowly onto the south lawn of the presidential abode. Out from Marine One popped Joe Biden.

While Trudeau touted those ties, the U.S. president was swooping back from his own speaking event where he doubled down on his auto-sector plan despite Canadian objections.

At a GM plant in Detroit, Biden clearly articulated the goal of his tax-credit plan for electric vehicles: "To buy American-made, union-made, clean vehicles."

But the president said something else in that speech that reveals an aspect of the American psyche that pervades everything else at this particular moment.

Biden called this an inflection point in history, comparing the globe to a chessboard where all the old pieces are moving around; he predicted future generations will ask a question about our time: Did the United States compete with China?

That fear of losing pervades nearly everything in Washington — lost economic power, lost manufacturing capacity, lost military supremacy.

Even in a week where the United States hosted its two closest neighbours and biggest customers for a so-called Three Amigos summit, North America was the second-biggest international story here.

A virtual call between Biden and China's Xi Jinping not only drew far more media coverage, but infinitely more curiosity from the American public.

Check out the Google search stats: Searches for Biden and Xi vastly dominated those for Biden and Trudeau.