Canada rallies to Trudeau after Trump’s insult

OTTAWA: Canadian politicians of all stripes rallied round their prime minister on Monday after his cautious and polite defence of free trade rules drew an extraordinary personal rebuke from US President Donald Trump.

The United States is Canada’s single biggest trade partner, with two-way exchanges of goods and services totalling US$ 673.9 billion in 2017, and Washington enjoys a US$ 8.4 billion surplus.

Nevertheless, Trump appears determined to up- end the trade relationship, insisting that the US is the loser, and has demanded that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) be renegotiated or abandoned.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is in talks to save the deal and, in concert with the other major trading powers in the G7 group of nations that met in Quebec over the weekend, pushed back against Trump.

And in Ottawa on Monday, International Trade Minister Francois- Philippe Champagne urged lawmakers to speed ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that might offset losses in US trade by binding Canada closer to Asia, Australia and Latin America.

In particular, Canada, Japan and the European G7 powers are outraged by Trump’s unilateral – or illegal, in their eyes – imposition of tariffs on imported steel and aluminum in the name of preserving US industry on national security grounds.

Trump skipped the end of the G7 summit on Saturday and was in the air en route to his historic nuclear summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un when Trudeau dubbed the national security justification “insulting.” — AFP