Former prime minister Brian Mulroney says weekend attacks on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by surrogates of U.S. President Donald Trump were unprecedented — but Canadian negotiators shouldn’t let the remarks throw them off their NAFTA strategy.
Mulroney — who was prime minister when both the original Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement were negotiated — said the Canadian side must not let static from the White House distract from the more serious business of negotiating a new NAFTA.
“I’ve never seen language like this. Least of all from subordinates of the president directed at the prime minister of their greatest friend and ally,” he said. “This, I’ve never seen before. Nor has anybody else.”
Canada-U.S. relations seem to have reached their lowest point in more than a generation after Trump tweeted Saturday that he was withdrawing support from a G7 joint communique, while complaining he had been blindsided by Trudeau’s criticism of U.S. tariffs at a closing news conference.
As he flew from Canada to Singapore Saturday night, Trump took to Twitter to label Trudeau as “dishonest” and “weak.”
Trump’s advisers piled on over the weekend, with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro telling Fox News that “there’s a special place in hell” for Trudeau, while Trump’s economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, suggested Trudeau’s comments somehow made the president look weak on the eve of a summit meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
“POTUS is not going to let a Canadian prime minister push him around … on the eve of this,” Kudlow said. “Kim must not see American weakness.”