White House rips Trudeau’s ‘betrayal’
Canadian leader vowed after G-7 summit to retaliate on tariffs
QUEBEC CITY — Bashing the leader of one of America’s venerable allies, the White House escalated its trade tirade and leveled more withering criticism Sunday against Canada’s prime minister, branding Justin Trudeau a back-stabber unworthy of President Donald Trump’s time.
“There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door,” Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro said.
Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, said her country “does not conduct its diplomacy through ad hominem attacks.”
The verbal volleys by Navarro and Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, picked up where Trump left off Saturday evening with a series of tweets from Air Force One en route to Singapore for his nuclear summit Tuesday. Kudlow suggested that Trump saw Trudeau as trying to weaken his hand before that meeting, saying the president won’t “let a Canadian prime minister push him around. … Kim must not see American weakness.”
Just as the Trudeau-hosted Group of Seven meeting of the world’s leading industrialized nations had seemed to weather Trump’s threats of a trade war, the president backed out of the group’s joint statement that Trudeau said all the leaders had come together to sign. Trump called Trudeau “dishonest & weak” after Trudeau said at a news conference that Canada would retaliate for new U.S. tariffs.
Trudeau didn’t respond to questions about Trump when the prime minister arrived at a Quebec City hotel Sunday for meetings with other world leaders, though Freeland later said “we don’t think that’s a useful or productive way to do business.”
Trudeau said he had reiterated to Trump, who left the G-7 meeting before it ended, that tariffs would harm industries and workers on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border. Trudeau told reporters that imposing retaliatory measures “is not something I relish doing” but that he wouldn’t hesitate to do so because “I will always protect Canadian workers and Canadian interests.”
Navarro, the Trump trade adviser, said his harsh assessment of what “bad faith” Trudeau did with “that stunt press conference” on Saturday “comes right from Air Force One.”
He said Trump “did the courtesy to Justin Trudeau to travel up to Quebec for that summit. He had other things, bigger things, on his plate in Singapore. … He did him a favor and he was even willing to sign that socialist communique. And what did Trudeau do as soon as the plane took off from Canadian airspace? Trudeau stuck our president in the back. That will not stand.”
Kudlow added that Trudeau was “polarizing” and “really kind of stabbed us in the back.” The Canadian leader pulled a “sophomoric political stunt for domestic consumption,” Kudlow said, that amounted to “a betrayal.”
“Don’t blame Trump. It was Trudeau who started blasting Trump after he left, after the deals had been made.” Kudlow said Trump won’t let people “take pot shots at him” and that Trudeau “should’ve known better.”