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Unlike Trump, Trudeau is one of the world's good guys. He is a mammal among reptiles

Unlike Trump, the preponderance of evidence suggests that Trudeau is one of the world’s good guys. He is a mammal among reptiles. But he is still not so much a prime minister as Canada’s first postmodern prime minister: a mascot. He is pleasant to look at, he attends all the right parties and he marches in all the right parades. But his leadership in the twilight hour of rules-based globalization amounts to a charming but wholly unconvincing celebrity endorsement of everything that went wrong with neoliberalism. If you want a Dear Leader figure to reassure you that everything is proceeding according to plan and everything is going to be alright, Trudeau is your man. Not to say the Conservatives or the New Democrats necessarily have something better on offer, but if you want someone to lead Canada by building sturdy global alliances in defence of liberal democracy, Justin Trudeau is exactly the wrong person for the job.

Neoliberalism’s great hope — the hubris that still animates Trudeau’s Liberals — was to imagine that the institutions of global capitalism could accommodate tyrannies, that despotism would wither as globalization swept away the borders, the bedlam and the anti-democratic barbarism of the 20th century. It hasn’t turned out that way. Wherever police states have been admitted, wherever they have been “engaged,” they have brought their corruption with them. The rot starts at the the top.

Neoliberalism's great hope was to imagine that global capitalism and institutions could destroy despotism

Last November, Beijing was pleased by the election of Meng Hongwei, the regime’s vice-minister of public security, to the presidency of Interpol, the international police body. On April 15, The New York Times published the results of an investigation revealing that it had confirmed some of the most astonishing corruption claims made by the absconding billionaire Guo Wengui, who vowed there was more to come. Within days, Interpol issued a warrant for Guo’s arrest on corruption charges.