Trump Says Freeland’s Departure Is Better for ‘Making Deals’

(Clockwise from top L) Then-Mexican Secretary of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal; U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer; Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; U.S. President Donald Trump; and Mexican President Pena Nieto participate in a signing ceremony for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Nov. 30, 2018. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump says the departure of Chrystia Freeland from the Liberal cabinet will help Canada strike better deals.

Trump commented on Freeland’s resignation from the role of deputy prime minister and finance minister on Dec. 16, saying in a Truth Social post the “Great State of Canada is stunned” after she resigned or “was fired” by “Governor Justin Trudeau.”

The incoming U.S. president has repeatedly referred to Canada as a “state” in recent weeks, referencing a previous joke he made that Canada should become the “51st” U.S. state and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau be made the “governor.”

In his post, Trump called Freeland’s behaviour “totally toxic” and “not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada.”

“She will not be missed!!!” added Trump.

Freeland dealt closely with the first Trump administration in her capacity as foreign affairs minister. Trudeau had appointed her in the role a few days before Trump was inaugurated as 45th U.S. president on Jan. 21, 2017.

Trump had promised on the campaign trail leading up to his first term U.S. president that he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or leave it entirely. Freeland’s appointment as foreign affairs minister was meant to place her as Canada’s main interlocutor to deal with that issue.

In her speech on Canada’s foreign policy priorities delivered in June 2017, Freeland took a number of jabs at the new Trump administration and its “America first” agenda.

“Humankind had learned through the direct experience of horror and hardship that the narrow pursuit of national self-interest, the law of the jungle, led to nothing but carnage and poverty,” Freeland said in the House of Commons.

Freeland also stated that adopting a “Canada first” viewpoint would be “wrong” and that Americans had voted for Trump to “shrug off the burden of world leadership.”

“The fact that our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership, puts into sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course,” she said.

Freeland repeated a similar message during a speech in Washington, D.C., during the NAFTA renegotiations in June 2018.

“You may feel today that your size allows you to go mano-a-mano with your traditional adversaries and be guaranteed to win. But if history tells us one thing, it is that no one nation’s pre-eminence is eternal,” she said.

Trump later commented in September 2018 that his team didn’t like the way Canada negotiates and doesn’t “like their representative very much,” without specifically naming Freeland.

Tariff Threat

During his most recent presidential campaign, Trump has also pledged to renegotiate the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal (USMCA) made in 2018. The trade agreement can be reviewed starting in 2026.

It is not this prospect, however, which has rearranged Canadian politics, but rather Trump’s threat to impose a 25 tariff on Canada and Mexico if they don’t bolster security at their borders.

This threat was mentioned prominently in Freeland’s resignation letter to Trudeau, who called it a “grave challenge.”

She said she was “at odds” with Trudeau on how to manage Canada’s finances at a time when the country needs to keep its “fiscal powder dry” to better deal with a “tariff war.”

“This means pushing back against ‘America First’ economic nationalism with a determined effort to fight for capital and investment and the jobs they bring,” she wrote.

Trudeau had visited Trump in Florida on Nov. 29, four days after he made the tariff threat. He took with him his top aides, the Canadian ambassador to the U.S., and only one minister Dominic LeBlanc, in charge of the public safety portfolio.

Freeland, the second-highest ranking official in the Trudeau government, who had renegotiated NAFTA and was put in charge of heading a cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations after Trump’s win, did not attend.

When asked by reporters why Freeland had not attended the meeting with Trudeau and Trump, she responded, “Well, that’s a question first and foremost for the prime minister.” She then added it was the “right choice” because the meeting was “principally about the border.”

LeBlanc also commented after the Mar-a-Lago meeting that he had exchanged phone numbers with Trump’s pick to oversee commerce Howard Lutnick.

“Incoming secretary Lutnick texted me the next morning and wants to get together again in the next few weeks to continue the conversation around the border,” LeBlanc told CBC News on Dec. 1.

A few hours after Freeland tended her resignation, Trudeau appointed LeBlanc as finance minister.