Newtonian law and Trump: he's losing

Newton's third law is this: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  That’s physics.

It’s politics, too. In the Trump era, on just about every front, Sir Isaac’s principle applied.

At the outset of Trump II, however, it didn’t. Most of us expected Trump’s second White House tenancy to be a lot like the first: outrageous things said, notably fewer outrageous things done, and then obligatory pushback by Congress, the courts, media and - ultimately - public opinion. Between 2016-2020, Trump lost a lot more than he won. There was always an equal and opposite reaction - two impeachments, among other things. A criminal conviction, too.

American voters perhaps thought a second Trump term would again be like that: proverbial bark worse than proverbial bite. They, we, were wrong. The reincarnated U.S. president has been like a tornado in a trailer park: he means what he says, and he does what he means.

On tariffs, on immigrants, on Ukraine, on Venezuela, on DEI, on gutting Obamacare, on vaccines and science-based health policy, on ICE, on foreign affairs, on using the power of the state to go after political critics: Trump’s destructive rhetoric has been matched by honest-to-goodness action, much more than in the first go-round.

The reaction of the world, in 2025-2026, was a bit like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief: there was denial, followed by anger, then bargaining, then depression and acceptance. In Canada, we were witness to this playing out with two Prime Ministers.

Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney - and the rest of us - didn’t believe it, at the start. Trump must be joking, right? When we realized he wasn’t, when we realized that Trump was actually serious about tariffs and his manifest destiny madness, Messrs. Trudeau and Carney pinballed between anger and bargaining. Trudeau was angry (“make it make sense!”), while Carney chose to bargain - playing the role of a grinning supplicant, enduring ritual humiliations at White House press briefings. None of it worked.

Then came a different kind of acceptance - that Trump was not playing a parlour game, that it was really real. Carney’s historic Davos speech was the start of that, and - with acceptance - the start of the resistance. The rest of the democratic world saw, and applauded it. Floor-crossers cited it. Carney’s numbers skyrocketed, and they haven’t come down to Earth yet.

So, now, we are seeing the Newtonian third rule playing out, but in political terms. Everywhere, Trump is experiencing an equal (and sometimes overwhelming) opposite force.

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