Leaders in Kitchener-Waterloo's tech sector are watching cautiously to see what economic policies U.S. president-elect Donald Trump will enact once he takes office in the new year.
Trump's stunning win Tuesday night may offer an opportunity to bring Canadian workers home from Silicon Valley, but the consensus is there's no rush to make quick decisions.
Trump has criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), calling it "the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere," during the first presidential debate in September, and came out strongly against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal that would also include Canada, China and Japan. Trump also promised to slash corporate taxes in the U.S., from 35% to 15%.
Vidyard, for example, is a video marketing and analytics company in Kitchener, Ont., which raised $35 million U.S. in a Series C funding round in January. CEO Michael Litt said he wasn't sure what Trump's plans were economically besides his comments on NAFTA, but he'd be watching closely. He did, however, see an upside for Canadian companies.
"This is an opportunity to really and truly showcase what is going on in Canada," said Litt. "It's a great opportunity to bring some of those people home who may have already been considering it anyway."
In May, the Wall Street Journal reported University of Waterloo's graduates are the second-most-frequently hired there, after Stanford University. All three executives have mentioned that Canadians are talking about coming home.
There are 300,000 Canadians in Silicon Valley working for tech companies down there, and experts say even if only a handful of them decide that they don't want to wait around to see how this turns out and they want to move back to Waterloo, companies here could truly benefit.
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