Needless to say, President Trump’s attacks on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are not going over well in Canada, with Canadian citizens and politicians across party lines uniting normally adverse political parties:
MONTREAL — Canadians have had enough.
It takes a lot to rile people in this decidedly courteous nation. But after President Trump’s parting shots against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the day he left the Group of 7 summit meeting in Quebec, the country reacted with uncharacteristic outrage and defiance at a best friend’s nastiness.
“It was extremely undiplomatic and antagonistic,” Frank McKenna, a former Canadian ambassador to the United States, wrote in an email. “It was disrespectful and ill informed.”
“All Canadians will support the prime minister in standing up to this bully,” he added. “Friends do not treat friends with such contempt.”
Even Mr. Trudeau’s political foes rose to his defense.
“We will stand shoulder to shoulder with the prime minister and the people of Canada,” Doug Ford, the Trump-like renegade who was recently elected premier of Ontario, wrote on Twitter.
Stephen Harper, the former Conservative prime minister whom Mr. Trudeau beat to become prime minister, told Fox News on Sunday that Mr. Trump had made a mistake targeting trade relations with Canada.
“I can understand why President Trump, why the American people feel they need some better trade relationships,” he said. But, he added, “this is the wrong target.”
“I can understand why President Trump, why the American people feel they need some better trade relationships,” he said. But, he added, “this is the wrong target.”
The ink had barely dried on the communiqué after the G-7 summit meeting in Charlevoix, Quebec, when President Trump berated Mr. Trudeau on Twitter from Air Force One, accusing him of being “very dishonest and weak” and of making up “false statements.”
“Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!” Mr. Trump wrote.
As Canadians were recovering from the sting of those remarks, Mr. Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow piled on, saying on television that Mr. Trudeau had “stabbed us in the back,” betrayed Mr. Trump and made him look weak before his summit meeting on Tuesday with North Korea’s leader.
And Peter Navarro, the president’s top trade adviser, suggested on Fox News Sunday that “there’s a special place in hell” for Mr. Trudeau.
(…)
From Singapore, where he is scheduled to meet with Kim Jong-un of North Korea for a historic summit, Mr. Trump again took to Twitter on Monday to assail Mr. Trudeau.
“Fair Trade is now to be called Fool Trade if it is not Reciprocal. According to a Canada release, they make almost 100 Billion Dollars in Trade with U.S. (guess they were bragging and got caught!),” Mr. Trump wrote. “Minimum is 17B. Tax Dairy from us at 270%. Then Justin acts hurt when called out!”
Mr. Trump is not exactly popular in Canada. And the Twitter tirade threatened to inflame already boiling resentment of the president, whose anti-immigrant stances and skepticism of climate change have infuriated many in a country that prides itself on its openness and social responsibility.
A Pew Research survey published last year found that Canadian antagonism toward Mr. Trump had helped reduce Canadians’ opinions of the United States to a low not seen in more than three decades, with only 43 percent of Canadians holding a favorable view of the country.
Canadians across the political spectrum said that while the world had grown used to Mr. Trump’s social media rants, the ferocity and personal tone of the insults against Mr. Trudeau had crossed a line. Some even asked whether Canadians should boycott United States products and stop traveling south of the border.
Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, told reporters that Canadians should be insulted by Mr. Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum, imposed because, the president said, Canada poses a national security threat to the United States.
“The national security pretext is absurd and frankly insulting to Canadians, the closest and strongest ally the United States has had,” Ms. Freeland said.
As to the biting comments made by Mr. Kudlow, she responded, “Canada does not believe that ad hominem attacks are a particularly appropriate or useful way to conduct our relations with other countries.”
There has yet to be any polling out of Canada since the incident of this weekend, of course, but one can hardly doubt that the reception of the President’s remarks is going to be anything other than overwhelmingly negative. Canadians may have a reputation for being nice and polite and friendly towards Americans in general, but they are as much Canadians as those of us living here in the United States are Americans. Were a foreign leader to speak publicly about an American politician such as the President in the manner that Trump did in his post-summit Air Force One tirade, I have no doubt that we wouldn’t take it kindly to say the least. It’s also worth noting that even people who are political adversaries of Trudeau such as former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and newly-elected Premier of Ontario Doug Ford, the brother of the late Rob Ford the often colorful Mayor of Toronto, are rallying behind the nation’s head of government. Canadians generally aren’t known for getting angry, but one senses that President Trump has gotten them fairly angry.
President Trump’s Twitter attack on Trudeau, of course, is only the latest salvo in a bizarre series of steps that this President has taken that have soured relations with an ally with whom we have essentially been at peace for nearly two centuries. It began in the early days of his Administration when he withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multinational trade agreement that would have included the United States, Canada, and a number of Asian nations in what would have been one of the largest multinational trade agreements in the world. In response, Trudeau’s Canadian government ended up picking up the pieces and forming its own version of the TPP with those Asian nations without the United States. Last month, the President decided to expand the tariffs on aluminum and steel to include imports from Europe, Mexico, and Canada, a move that was justified based on claims of “national security” that were dismissed for the nonsense they are by Prime Minister Trudeau and by Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.
As I said above, historically speaking Canadians have been fairly positive about the United States, and the nation of Canada has been among our most loyal allies. Seventy-four years ago, thousands of Canadians died or were injured fighting alongside of Americans during the invasion of Normandy that began the liberation of Europe from Nazi control. Canadians have fought alongside Americans in numerous conflicts since World War Two, including most notably the Afghan War in the wake of the September 11th attacks. During the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979, Canadian diplomats helped hide Americans who had escaped from the American Embassy in Tehran and brought them home to the United States when it was safe to do so. In the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks, Canada played host to hundreds of American tourists who were prevented from landing in the United States, with many ordinary Canadians taking these people into their homes until arrangements to get them home could be made. Beyond this, Canada has been a massive source of tourism for the United States and American companies and their Canadian subsidiaries, especially in the auto industry, have been so intertwined as to effectively function as one. To suggest that such a nation is a national security threat is an absurd slap in the fact, and to treat their Prime Minister the way that this Administration has done is nothing short of a national embarressment for the United States. It’s no wonder that Canadians are upset with the the United States right now. Indeed, they deserve to be.
