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It’s no big shocker, in a country leaning heavily Democrat, that reaction to President Donald Trump’s truculent inaugural speech in the first 48 hours has run the gamut from fear, to loathing, to horror. But a pause for breath is in order. There’s room for qualified reassurance, from a Canadian standpoint, in the blunt clarity of the new administration’s plans.

The inaugural address last Friday was a near-verbatim reiteration of Trump’s major campaign theme, in terms calculated to appeal to the roughly 63 million Americans who voted for him. This was the big line: “Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”

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Hand-wringing and hair-tearing aside, that now becomes the standard by which every Trump administration decision will be measured and anticipated, at home and abroad, for the next four years. It means, for starters, that Canadian individuals and businesses can begin to plot a way through the previously impenetrable murk. That leaves us better off, in this narrow sense, than we were Thursday.