Stephanie Holmes-Winton at CacheFlo wrote an excellent column for us this week on the difference between financial advice and product advice. “Take a hard look at your practice,” she wrote. “How do you help clients navigate those areas they find most financially stressful?”
It’s a question that aligns with discussions we’ve been having about how to cover Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Advisor.ca is not a political news platform, but there are economic implications to his tariff threats that absolutely stress your clients out. Our coverage is designed to help you have the kind of client conversations that Holmes-Winton is advocating for.
These editorial decisions are complicated by Trump’s remarkable propensity to make stuff up, and his history of using outlandish threats as a negotiation tactic. Cooler heads insist that his overheated rhetoric is all in service of a renegotiation of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement. He’s trolling us, they say.
But we cannot know that. Trump believes in tariffs, that much is clear. And he’s enough of a contrarian to push back on whatever conventional wisdom his advisors argue in favour of. Trump said on Monday night that we could see tariffs as early as February. On Thursday, he told attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that the U.S. can do without Canadian imports.
There’s more stress ahead. Prepare your clients, even if that means simply calming them down.
