While we were celebrating the Canadian Evening at the SEMA and AAPEX automotive aftermarket shows in Las Vegas on November 5, Americans were electing their 47th president.

It was strange to realize that while the Autosphere team was networking with industry friends and contacts, Americans were throwing open the White House doors to Donald Trump.

What will be the impact of a Republican, conservative, and clearly protectionist government on our own automotive sector? Only a fortune teller could predict that. First and foremost, the next president has always maintained unpredictability as a character trait.

The forceful announcements about applying across-the-board trade tariffs could also be diluted with a healthy dose of realism, since you don’t need to be an economist to understand that penalizing automotive parts manufactured in China amounts to taxing consumers. The same goes for the threat of heavily taxing vehicles manufactured in Mexico.

Moreover, will major American replacement parts distributors stand idle while the same part can enter Canada without such indexation?

And does Trump’s return to power mark the death knell for transport electrification in the United States? That would be quite ironic, knowing that Elon Musk, father of Tesla and principal initiator of the electric wave among our southern neighbours, will be one of the flamboyant agents of his presidency.

What my taxi driver told me about this subject, on the way to the airport, regarding electric vehicles, is that American consumers have nothing against them but refuse to have them imposed upon them.

The day after the election, when the results were clear and recognized by all, we were walking the aisles of these major specialized shows. And the message we could hear was surprisingly calm, business as usual. With a surprising touch of magical thinking. As if the mere assertion that the president would straighten out the economy—not doing so badly anyway—would breathe in a wind of confidence that would, on its own, energize the economy.