After more than a year of trying to make nice, Justin Trudeau finally looks fed up with Donald Trump.
Canada had pushed for an exemption from Trump’s tariffs — thinking, now naively, there’d be a perk to being a neighbour, ally and largest buyer of U.S. goods. Trudeau had bitten his tongue through skirmishes over airplanes, lumber and North American Free Trade Agreement talks.
That all changed Thursday when Canada, along with Mexico and the European Union, lost exemptions to the U.S. metal tariffs.
Trudeau tore into the Trump administration, if only by the standards of stereotypical Canadian politeness. He fired back with tariffs on U.S. exports of everything from whisky to motorboats to orange juice. He said the legal basis of tariffs — U.S. national security — was an affront to Canadian soldiers who died fighting alongside Americans in numerous global battles.
It’s a tone change for the “sunny ways” Trudeau. Canada is a close U.S. military ally and the top U.S. export market, more than the U.K., Japan and Germany combined. It sells the U.S. more steel and aluminum than anyone else, in part because of deeply integrated auto and defense sectors. Trudeau cracked down on Chinese steel imports for Trump, and U.S. data show that it has a trade surplus with Canada. None of it mattered.
Underscoring his frustration, Trudeau offered a rare glimpse into high-level talks with Trump’s administration to update the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the president regularly threatens to tears up.
Trudeau said he and Trump were planning to meet this week because a NAFTA deal was in reach.
“There was the broad lines of a decent win-win-win deal on the table that I thought required that final deal-making moment,” he said. Then Vice President Mike Pence called and said Trudeau could only see Trump if he agreed to a U.S. demand for a Nafta sunset clause. Trudeau refused and the meeting never happened.
Earlier in the day, Trudeau’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, called the tariffs “the strongest trade action Canada has taken in the post-war era.” His finance minister, Bill Morneau, said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was going to get an earful at the Group of Seven finance ministers’ meeting that began Thursday in Whistler, British Columbia. “I don’t want to kid you, we will need to talk about this first and foremost,” he said.
Trudeau, a regular advocate of free trade and multi-lateralism, placed the blame squarely at Trump’s feet. “Today’s decision belongs entirely to the U.S. administration. That was their choice,” he said. “The Trump administration simply doesn’t understand its measures will hurt Americans,” he said.
Buoying Trudeau’s tone change is near-unanimity in Canada about the tariffs. Opposition parties have largely supported Trudeau’s approach with Trump and on NAFTA. The nation’s largest private-sector union, Unifor, applauded the retaliatory tariffs. “Make no mistake — this is a full-on trade war,” President Jerry Dias said.
Roland Paris, an academic and former Trudeau foreign policy adviser, said he declined a meeting with the U.S. embassy on principle to protest the “apalling” actions.
Patience has worn thin. “We’ve all had just about enough of Donald Trump,” Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, a Trudeau ally, told reporters.
Trudeau now prepares to host Trump at the G-7 leaders summit in Charlevoix, Quebec, next week. Trudeau said Trump is scheduled to attend and that he expects “frank and serious conversations amongst world leaders.” In the meantime, the tariff war is on — with another potential tariff, on cars, remaining a possibility. It too would be implemented under grounds that Canada undermines U.S. national security.