Making Friends and Influencing an American President

"We are very unhappy with the negotiations and the negotiating style of Canada. We don't like their representative very much."
"We are not getting along with their negotiators. Canada has treated us very badly."
"[Why deciding not to meet with Trudeau at the venue of the UN's general meeting?] Because his tariffs are too high and he doesn't seem to want to move and I told him, 'forget about it'."
U.S. President Donald Trump

"Everybody knows what each other's position is on all of the major issues and it's really a question of whether or not the U.S. wants to have a deal."
Canadian ambassador to the U.S. David MacNaughton

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland walks out of the U.S. Trade Representative's office in Washington in August. Freeland said Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs were illegal, to no avail. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

Well, that's a big surprise. Donald Trump doesn't much care for Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland. On the other hand, not such a big surprise. Minister of the Crown though she is and presumably aware of the delicacy with which her department is tasked to communicate at all times in a diplomatic manner with all of the country's international executive contacts, she nonetheless seems to approach diplomacy with all the grace of an untethered bull in a cow pasturage. The show-off thespian streak in her personality has no place in the position she occupies.

When in June, Minister Freeland went to Washington as the recipient of the Diplomat of the Year Award from Foreign Policy Magazine her acceptance speech was replete with criticism of all things Trump. In her acceptance speech, Minister Freeland, speaking directly to those Americans present at the event, and knowing that her remarks would find their way into print, she raised concerns of the Trump administration's (read President Trump) concerning utterances, implied threats and directions on matters as diverse as trade, NATO membership and international relations.

She did this, knowing full well that most Canadians loathe President Trump. She did this irrespective of the fact that she has a responsibility to comport herself with due consideration as to how her words and her attitude would impact the relationship between Canada and the United States. Long before Trump came on the scene, the U.S. acted the bully in its relations with other countries, including Canada. On the other hand, without the United States, in its famed role as Global Sheriff, the world would be a more dangerous place.

Chrystia Freeland did Canada no favours in her adverse behaviour, but then she does have the manner and impoverishment of restraint due to the heady entitlement of being a "progressive" to fall back on, emulating her boss on the world stage, swaggering and elitist, attention-seeking and gloating over his own perfection as the leader of the country that returned from obscurity. It most certainly did, leaving behind Stephen Harper's resolute courtesy to his peers (Putin aside), his probity and his intelligent governing style.

The Harpers too visited India and went along to the Taj Mahal, but it was the Trudeaus that eyes swivelled toward in disbelief at their mawkish behaviour and elaborately inappropriate sartorial splendour, much less his insulting-to-his-host meeting with a convicted terrorist, a Kalistan separatist, a group with which Modi is not exactly on gracious terms with. When Stephen Harper talked trade with China, India, the EU and Pacific trading partners, he left any preoccupation with gender roles where they belonged, at home.

Still, Canada now has a deal in the eleventh-hour free trade agreement encompassing the interests of the three countries on the North American continent, the United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) free trade agreement. Had Justin Trudeau not insulted and infuriated the President of the United States of America whom he hosted along with other members of the G7 by scornfully asserting that Canada wouldn't be 'pushed around' by its U.S. trading partner, an insult that Trump, who had assumed that a comfortable relationship existed personally between himself and Trudeau, there is little doubt that Trump wouldn't have doubled down as he did on demands and concessions.

Is everyone happy? Trudeau proclaimed the agreement "A good deal for Canada". Of course the federal government will have to face Quebec's wrath over the further loosening of supply management. And Canada's aluminum and steel industry isn't too thrilled at the prospect of the deal's setting limits. Ditto for the auto industry, since in both cases it will ultimately limit growth. Nor will the provinces' cost in pharmaceutical products increasing with the lengthier patent rights protection go over very well. But a deal is a deal is a deal despite Trudeau averring that "No deal is better than a bad deal". Someone should ask him to define a bad deal.

Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland arrives with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to discuss the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) in Ottawa on Oct. 1, 2018. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press