Defence investments will be winners in Trump world: Teachers' CEO

There will be winners and losers as United States President Donald Trump shakes up the world order through tariffs and shifting military strategies, but one area poised to prosper is defence, says Jo Taylor, chief executive of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board.

“If you look for a sector where there’s going to be more activity and investment over the next five years, it probably is in defence, for all the reasons you know and you’ve seen,” he said.

Since taking office in January, Trump has repeatedly spoken about a handful of global ambitions: taking control of the strategically important Panama Canal, taking over Greenland, a semiautonomous island economically tied to Denmark, and imposing economic pain on Canada with a view to making it his country’s 51st state.

In February, a broadcasted meeting between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office erupted into a testy exchange, with Trump saying Ukraine would be lost without U.S. support and that Zelenskyy didn’t “have the cards” to set the agenda on the U.S.’s attempts to broker a ceasefire with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Taylor said the $266.3-billion Teachers’ pension plan, which on Thursday reported a total fund return of 9.4 per cent for the year ended Dec. 31, 2024, will be cognizant of its members’ views on assets in the defence sector when making investment decisions.

Last year, teachers’ unions called on the pension plan to stop investing in weapons manufacturers.

“We want to be careful about that … our values and our relationship with our members. They have strong views about what they are comfortable with us investing in in that sector and where they’d probably be less comfortable,” he said. 

“We also screen companies out