In contrast to the close and supportive relationship that Trudeau, who is entering his final week in office, enjoyed with another US president, Barack Obama, his relationship with Trump has been fractious.
In 2018, following the G7 summit meeting in Charlevoix, Quebec, Trump heckled Trudeau on social media, accusing him of being “very dishonest and weak” and of making up “false statements” while suggesting that he might impose tariffs on Canadian-made cars.
Trudeau and Trump during the US president’s first term in 2017.Credit: AP
While Trudeau was generally circumspect in his public remarks about Trump during the president’s first administration, the two men have dramatically different personal and political styles. Trump bombastically denigrates people he perceives as opponents, whereas Trudeau often speaks about the value of bringing people together, what he once called a “sunny ways” approach to political life.
In candid remarks to a group of business leaders last month that was captured by a microphone, Trudeau offered a theory for Trump’s Canada obsession that is widely shared in the country.
“Not only does the Trump administration know how many critical minerals we have, but that may be even why they keep talking about absorbing us and making us the 51st state,” Trudeau told the gathering in Toronto.
Trump does have a particular affinity for minerals. He has been pushing to broker a deal to secure access to Ukraine’s supply of rare earths as he seeks to broker an agreement to end its war with Russia.
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As a businessperson, Trump had two dealings with Canada that, while relatively limited, were both failures. The Toronto hotel and condominium project, owned by a Toronto investor who licensed the Trump name and hired a Trump company to manage it, went into receivership in 2016. The following year, a hotel owned by Malaysian investors bearing the Trump name, again under licence and with a similar management contract, opened in Vancouver, British Columbia. (Promotional material exaggerated the building’s height.) It failed as well.
Both hotels, which now operate under different names and management, were magnets for protesters in a country where Trump has long been unpopular for his “America first” views and disparagement of Canada. Before the Vancouver opening, the city’s mayor at the time, Gregor Robertson, wrote to the building’s owners asking that they not use the Trump name on it.
“Trump’s name and brand have no more place on Vancouver’s skyline than his ignorant ideas have in the modern world,” Robertson wrote.
Before delving into politics, Trump expressed little ill will toward Canada.
In 2012, when the Obama administration was delaying a decision on approving the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would have transported oil from Canada to the US, Trump declared on social media that the project must move forward.
“We need to use our resources and support allies like Canada,” Trump said.
But by 2015, his perceived failings of the North American Free Trade Agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico became a central issue of Trump’s first presidential campaign. Trump routinely called the deal a “disaster” for American workers, and prioritised scrapping the pact as a first order of business if he won the election.
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An agreement to overhaul the trade deal was signed in 2020 after fraught negotiations between the three countries that often grew contentious. At one point, Trump suggested leaving Canada on the sidelines and proceeding with a deal between the US and Mexico.
Now back in office, Trump has made clear that the agreement he signed did not do enough for the US and must be rewritten. In recent days he has lashed out at Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian official who negotiated it on behalf of Canada.
“She’s a whack,” Trump said of Freeland, who was Canada’s deputy prime minister and finance minister during the president’s first term, in an interview with The Spectator.
As Trump wielded the threat of new tariffs on Canada over the past month, his tone toward the departing prime minister has been even more derisive. He has nicknamed Trudeau “governor” amid persistent suggestions that the US might annex Canada.
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(Trump even called for former Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky to run for prime minister, suggesting late last year that he would “win easily”. Gretzky, who does not support Canada joining the US, has faced backlash at home from citizens who view him as a traitor because of his association with Trump.)
The insults have led to a boom in nationalism in Canada, including “Made in Canada” Facebook groups. In one group, which has more than 1 million members, Canadians compared notes on pancake mixes that are made in Canada and offered recommendations on flavours of Cove Soda, a potential alternative to Coca-Cola.
“There’s a generalised sense of patriotism that has not been evident in Canada in many years in response to Trump and Trump’s hostility,” said Ira Wells, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Victoria College.
But Trump appears unfazed by Canada’s declarations of independence. He indicated last week that the US was also prepared to sever ties with Canada without changes to the trade relationship between the two countries.
The US, Trump said, had no need for Canadian products such as lumber, and he asserted that Canada could not survive without US military protection and favourable trade terms.
“I love Canada, I love the people of Canada,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting at the White House. “It’s not fair for us to be supporting Canada. If we don’t support them, they don’t subsist as a nation.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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