Tim Harper
If you believe body language is the true indicator of relations between global leaders, there was much to analyze in an awkward moment between Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump at the United Nations this week.
If you believe Trudeau has fumbled trade talks with Trump and is sprinting headlong into crippling auto tariffs, you saw an overeager prime minister approach the U.S. president in search of a handshake that was only grudgingly given by a man who would not even stand to acknowledge an ally.
If you watched the encounter without partisan goggles, you saw Trump being a boor.
In telling the world he refused a meeting with Trudeau, formally or informally, and that he didn’t like Canada’s negotiating style or our lead negotiator in NAFTA talks, he was again doing Trudeau a favour.
While Trump avoided any interaction with Trudeau on the margins of meetings the way one avoids an ex-partner at a house party, he was also signalling Canada has a tough trade-negotiating team.
Yes, this may be just another pre-deal manifestation of Trump’s negotiating style, which features threats, fake deadlines, falsehoods and insults.
But it was also the worst public show of condescension this country’s leadership has endured from a neighbour in living memory.
Certainly, there was well-known enmity between Trudeau’s father, Pierre, and Richard Nixon, but that president vented in private, his views only revealed later on his infamous audio tapes.
George W. Bush and Jean Chrétien clashed over Iraq - a senior Chrétien aide had to resign after being overheard calling the U.S. president a moron - but the two men did not slag each other from the podium.
A sense of decorum and respect between leaders continued through tense times.
This has all been tossed out by Trump, a man who has admitted he made up trade numbers in a private meeting with Trudeau, has bluster, vowed economic “ruination” for Canada, has called Trudeau “very weak” and “dishonest,” and whose adviser promised “a special place in hell” for the prime minister.
It’s easy to see why Trump would not like Trudeau, a leader who views policy through a genderequity lens and made a show of welcoming refugees.
It’s also easy to see why he would dislike Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland because - well, she’s a woman, and a tough woman to boot, who refused to smile and capitulate at Trump’s winner-takeall NAFTA table.
She is a woman who has not been shy about voicing Canadian thoughts on Trump’s world views.
What Trump does not understand, nor likely care about from his xenophobic bubble, is that his trash-talking merely galvanizes support for the Trudeau government.
It has always been an open question how long Trudeau can benefit by subtly campaigning against Trump, but Trump keeps giving the Liberals more leash than anyone had reason to expect.