WASHINGTON - Justin Trudeau didn't mention the American election in his first message to a U.S. audience, a few hours after arriving for his first prime ministerial visit to Washington.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses the crowd at a Wednesday night party. (Photo: Hannah Thomson for Canada 2020)

The subtext was clear enough. The prime minister used a late-evening talk to lament the danger of isolation, in a country gripped by heated election debates over banning Muslim travellers; refusing Syrian refugees; expelling Mexican migrants; and cancelling trade deals blamed for sending jobs abroad.

"It becomes easy to be fearful," he told the gathering, hosted by a progressive think-tank at an art gallery near the White House and attended by officials from both countries, including Canadian cabinet ministers.

"It becomes easy to turn in on ourselves. But we know from history that it's much more important to turn outwards. And to draw out the best of each other. And to understand that whenever people get together regardless of how different they may seem there are always more things that we have in common."

Joked that Canada isn't all about hugging pandas

The closest he came to mentioning the election was to say that Americans, Canadians, and others who discuss politics are struggling with very similar problems: a struggling middle class, rapid change, and globalization that represents not only new opportunities but also risks.

He acknowledged the challenges of globalization.

He said fast-changing populations have people wrestling with their identity. He said Canada has the same challenges — he joked that it isn't some perfect happy land where everyone hugs pandas all day and everyone's a progressive feminist, but also has voices pulling the country in different directions.

"It becomes easy to turn in on ourselves. But we know from history that it's much more important to turn outwards. And to draw out the best of each other."

Trudeau alluded to Canada's recent election. He didn't specifically mention its debates over religious headwear. But he said the fanfare video shown before he took the stage had sugar-coated the campaign a bit.

He said North America needed a positive attitude about the world to take advantage of its new opportunities: "To be at its most generous, to be at its wisest, to be at its most innovative... To learn to draw from the populations that come here from every corner of the planet."

In short, Trudeau appeared to embrace the moniker attached to him in one American newspaper headline last week: "The Anti-(Donald)Trump," with the piece contrasting his positions with the refugee-refusing, Muslim-travel-ban-proposing, Mexican-wall-wanting, trade-deal-blasting Republican frontrunner.