Turn Orange Into Orange Juice
There’s always 2 sides to a coin
Trump has only been back in power for about a month, it seems like he’s got lots of people riled up.
You have to give it to this guy. He is a Master at getting people’s attention, and even more incredibly, keeping your attention on him.
Getting attention is one thing. Keeping attention is a whole different story.
I used to run a marketing agency for many years. One of the hardest things as a marketer is keeping people’s attention for a continuous amount of time.
Getting attention isn’t hard. One just has to be bold.
You probably have seen the people dressed up in a funny costume, spinning a big sign for $5 pizza or something like that on the side of a busy street.
You noticed the person simply because of the costume and the spinning sign. It’s funny looking, it’s not “normal” and human brain loves to pay attention to what’s not “normal”.
Getting attention is easy by being different or not “normal”. Keeping attention, is something completely different.
Think about this, if someone wants to get your attention, all they have to do is acting different than what’s considered “normal”.
However, if that person constantly acts not “normal”, we will identify and label that person as “abnormal” and our brain will mostly ignore the person’s “abnormal” behaviors.
In this case, the “abnormal” behaviors now become “normal” to us.
This is how we navigate around the “crazy people”. Because once you label someone as “crazy”, then none of their crazy behaviors are shocking to you.
This is what makes Trump a genius at keeping people’s attention.
He constantly flips between “normal” and “abnormal”. Keeping people guessing, and keeping him on top of many people’s minds.
I wanted to share this because there’s some sanity to this guy. Whether you agree with him or not.
He’s not completely “crazy”. He’s simply crazy enough that drives a lot of people crazy.
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There’s always 2 sides to a coin
One thing he has managed to do is to make usually friendly Canadians angry.
That’s a tall order.
I can’t remember the last time Canadians are this angry at someone.
Even after last year’s bitter battle at the Stanley Cup playoff, it’s only the Edmonton Oilers fan and some hockey die-hards who got angry at Florida Panthers.
This time, Canadians are really angry.
Just look at the actions Canadians have taken:
‘Mad as hell’ Canadians cancel US travel en masse as trade war escalates
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The other side of the coin
While Trump might be winning the attention game by threatening Canadians, creating fears or short term impact to the Canadian economy, there’s something Trump might have not anticipated.
The unification of Canadians.
Buying Canadian made products is only the beginning.
There’s so much Canadians can do internally, domestically to navigate the potential threats from Trump.
Here are 2 big ones:
* Reduce interprovincial trade barriers
* Deregulate to increase productivity
This is how we turn “orange” into orange juice.
This is my sarcastic humorous attempt at the popular saying - turn lemon into lemonade.
While many fear the potential tariff threats which we have little control over (nothing hasn’t even happened yet), we can focus on what we have 100% control over - our domestic economic policy.
If you are feeling angry right now, take the time to write your local MLA, Premier, urging them to support stronger domestic trade policies, reducing regulations similar to what the US is doing.
After all, if we’re strong and competitive within Canada itself, there’s much less impact Trump has on Canada.
A national sport such as Hockey didn’t unite Canada last year during the finals, with many non-Oilers fans simply living their lives as usual, because it wasn’t their team in the final, Trump has managed to do something even our Prime Minister has not been able to do - uniting Canada against an external threat - himself!
In that way, as Canadians, thank you President Trump, eh!
If you like my work, I invite you to share it with others.
Eric Chang
Dallas, Texas
February 25, 2025
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