The former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau once famously remarked that being America’s neighbour “is like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, if one can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

The upcoming U.S. presidential election may provide plenty of twitches and grunts.

Despite the normal ebbs and flows of interactions between sovereign nations, it is probably fair to say that the U.S.-Canada relationship has been positive and to the mutual benefit of both countries since the 1815 signing of the Treaty of Ghent. As President John F. Kennedy told the Canadian Parliament in 1961, “Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies.”

Canada and the U.S. share a 5,500-mile border that is crossed by an average of 400,000 people and $2 billion worth of trade every day. The countries have been partners in defense co-operation since the Second World War, signed an airspace defense agreement in 1958 and have more than 50 bilateral environmental arrangements in place.

On the economic and business front, the two countries now have the world’s largest trading relationship, with $663 billion worth of goods and services exchanged between the countries last year. Canada is the second-largest trading partner for the U.S., while the U.S. is Canada’s largest trading partner.

Trade relationships between the two countries have developed greatly since the signing of the 1988 U.S.-Canada free trade pact and the 1993 NAFTA agreement, which allow most goods and services to cross the border without duties. Over the past 20 years, U.S. exports to Canada increased by 179% while U.S. imports from Canada are up 165% over the same time period.

Canada is the leading export destination for 35 U.S. states while 22 states count Canada as their largest import trading partner. The U.S. Commerce Department estimates that export activity to Canada supports 1.7 million U.S. jobs, and one could expect a similar influence on the Canadian job market.

Despite the generally positive relationships between the countries, political developments do have the ability to dampen, delay or even jeopardize business relationships. One prime example was the introduction of the Smooth-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which raised taxes on Canadian imports into the U.S. Canada retaliated with its own measures, resulting in a 75% drop in trade between the countries in subsequent years. More recently, the long delay and eventual decline of a presidential permit to extend the Keystone XL pipeline to carry Canadian crude into the U.S. resulted in a deterioration of relations between Ottawa and Washington.

Investors will be well advised to carefully assess what influence the forthcoming U.S. presidential elections may have on future economic relations between the two countries. “Good things happen when the U.S. President and Canadian Prime Minister are friends,” former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said. His own friendly relationship with President Ronald Reagan provided a positive tone for agreements on free trade and acid rain.

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party is set to govern Canada at least until 2019, it is worth noting that Canada also has an aspirant political leader with a strikingly similar political approach to the current Republican Party’s presumptive candidate, Donald Trump.

Kevin O’Leary is a wealthy, 62-year-old reality TV persona with a feature role in the “Shark Tank,” where aspiring business owners pitch their ventures to rich potential investors. He also makes regular appearances on numerous TV channels as a business commentator and apparently commands appearance fees of around $70,000 for speaking engagements.

He has a strong entrepreneurial business background, having founded a business that developed computer games for school kids. The business was sold in 1998 to Mattel for US$3.8 billion – a deal that was later described by Business Week as the “Worst Deal of All Times.” Mattel eventually sold the remains of the business for US$27 million some years later.

O’Leary developed his brand as a prophet of the “Cold Hard Truth,” which translates in freewheeling and rather harsh public pronouncements to those who come into his line of fire. He has described Rachel Notley, the Prime Minister of Alberta, as “…10,000 feet underwater, a corpse, totally incompetent, a total disaster.” He publicly declares that he is “…sick of seeing his money being wasted” (by incompetent politicians) and that he is “really pissed off” (because of this wasteful spending).

Notwithstanding the generally polite nature of Canadians, and without even declaring a formal candidacy for the leadership of the Conservative Party, O’Leary is leading polls to replace former Prime Minister Stephen Harper as the next permanent leader of the party in 2017.

Only time will tell whether the new brand of politicians will dominate the U.S. and Canadian landscapes in the future, but Canada and the U.S. have developed deep economic ties that will not easily be disrupted even by unpredictable political actors. Positive, friendly relationships at the highest level could further the expansion and growth of mutually beneficial economic and business developments.