Hang on tight
Canadian ambassador to Ireland Kevin Vickers tosses Hadrien Trudeau into the air as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, look on after arriving in Dublin, Ireland, on Monday. The prime minister stopped in Ireland, on his way to the G20 summit in Germany, to speak with Irish leader Leo Varadkar about CETA, the Canada-EU trade agreement.
OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau embarked Monday on a week-long European sojourn that will culminate in a meeting of 20 of the world’s largest economies — one where he’ll test-drive a brand new foreign affairs policy aimed at charting Canada’s own course in the world.
Friday’s G20 meetings are shaping up as a showdown between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Donald Trump.
In a speech last week to the German parliament that laid out her priorities for the meeting, Merkel — host of the two-day gathering in Hamburg — delivered a pointed critique of Trump’s “America First” doctrine without ever once mentioning his name.
“Whoever believes that the world’s problems can be solved by isolationism and protectionism is mistaken,” Merkel said.
Her G20 agenda — stronger global co-operation to fight climate change and terrorism, and more robust international trade — cuts directly to the heart of her well-documented differences with Trump, a strategy some see as an effort to further isolate the U.S. president on the world stage.
Trump, for his part, has escalated the war of words with Merkel, using familiar rhetoric about a “massive trade deficit” the U.S. has with Germany and threats to slap import taxes on German-made cars.
Trump stood alone at the G7 meeting in Italy last month when the other six leaders, including Merkel and Trudeau, pushed him to stick with the Paris climate change accord, an international treaty aimed at keeping global warming to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Trump demurred, refused to sign the Paris part of the G7 communiqué, and later made it official: the U.S. was out.
Since then, Merkel has been working hard to shore up support for the accord among other G20 nations.
She met with leaders from China and India, travelled to Mexico and Argentina last month and sat down with European leaders just last week to develop a united front.
Into this mix steps Trudeau — more philosophically aligned with Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, France’s young and stylish new president, but lashed irrevocably to the U.S. through economic and geographic ties.
Before landing in Germany, Trudeau stopped in Dublin on Monday to meet with Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar and talk up another international trade priority — the Canada-EU trade deal known as CETA.
Trade between Canada and Ireland was only about $2.4 billion in trade in 2016, but both countries desperately want the agreement to work — Canada as a hedge against U.S. protectionism, and Ireland as a hedge against an uncertain post-Brexit future.
The deal, finalized last year, has struggled to get ratification from all 28 European Union member states, particularly over provisions and protections for foreign investors.