LA MALBAIE, Quebec -- President Donald Trump's trade adviser Sunday blamed Canada for the failure to finalize a reboot of the North American Free Trade Agreement and suggested the country's prime minister is headed to hell for crossing the U.S. leader.
"We'd have a great deal with NAFTA by now if the Canadians would spend more time at the bargaining table and less time lobbying Capitol Hill, and our press and state governments here," Peter Navarro said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. "They are just simply not playing fair. Dishonest. Weak."
Navarro also said "there's a special place in hell" for any foreign leader engaging in "bad faith diplomacy" with Trump. "And that's what 'bad faith' Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference."
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow also said on ABC's This Week on Sunday that "we were very close to making a deal with Canada on NAFTA" before Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, criticized the U.S. after a meeting of the Group of Seven nations, drawing a rebuke from Trump. Many observers, including U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, have said the sides are not close to a deal.
The aftermath of the G-7 summit in Quebec was a political calculation, meant to show muscularity in advance of the historic summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, one of those advisers acknowledged Sunday. There has rarely been such a coordinated and acerbic series of attacks by White House advisers aimed at a U.S. ally, revealing the extent to which Trump possibly felt slighted by Trudeau as he left for his North Korea talks.
"[The president] is not gonna let a Canadian prime minister push him around," Kudlow said on CNN's State of the Union. "He is not going to permit any show of weakness on the trip."
CNN host Jake Tapper picked up on the implication, saying this was about North Korea.
"Of course it was, in large part," Kudlow said. "Kim must not see American weakness."
Trump took umbrage at remarks Trudeau made Saturday at a news conference after the G-7 summit. Trudeau and other G-7 leaders have for weeks been critical of Trump's decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum from their countries. Canada and other countries could potentially retaliate with tariffs of their own, leading to a trade war.
He said he wanted to work with U.S. negotiators on trade deals and criticized tariffs imposed by Trump. He added, "Canadians, we're polite, we're reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around."
Those were fighting words for Trump, who on Twitter accused Trudeau of "false statements" and of being "very dishonest & weak." He didn't specify what comments he felt were false. Trump wrote that he had ordered his aides to withdraw the United States' endorsement of a joint communique that he and the other G-7 leaders had agreed to.
Today, Trump continued his broadsides against Canada and European trading partners. "Why should I, as President of the United States, allow countries to continue to make Massive Trade Surpluses, as they have for decades, while our Farmers, Workers & Taxpayers have such a big and unfair price to pay?" Trump wrote in a series of tweets from Singapore ahead of his meeting with Kim.
Trudeau went on Twitter himself Sunday morning, declining to address the Trump ruckus explicitly and choosing instead to highlight the virtues of the agreement reached at the G-7 summit: "The historic and important agreement we all reached at #G7Charlevoix will help make our economies stronger & people more prosperous, protect our democracies, safeguard our environment and protect women & girls' rights around the world," he wrote. "That's what matters."
A number of G-7 officials tried to brush aside Trump's comments, suggesting he was trying to show bravado ahead of his talks with the North Korean leader. But things escalated dramatically once Trump saw Trudeau's comments from Air Force One.
Kudlow, appearing on both CNN and CBS, repeatedly accused Trudeau of "betrayal" of Trump and other leaders of the G-7.
After Kudlow and Navarro's comments, Canada's foreign affairs minister said Ottawa "does not conduct its diplomacy through ad hominem attacks" and was justified in responding to Trump's tariffs.
"In a way, that feeling of being insulted is most acute when these illegal and unjustified actions come from a country which is an extremely close partner of ours -- our friend, our neighbor, our ally," Chrystia Freeland told reporters Sunday in Quebec City.
The attacks on a longtime ally and its leader drew sharp criticism. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also attended the summit, told German public television that she found Trump's tweet disavowing the G-7 statement "sobering" and "a little depressing." Merkel also said the European Union would "act" against the U.S. trade measures.
French President Emmanuel Macron's office criticized Trump, saying "international cooperation cannot be dictated by fits of anger and insults," according to a statement obtained by Agence France-Presse. A senior U.K. government official said Theresa May's government stands by commitments made in the communique.
European Council President Donald Tusk took to trolling Navarro on Twitter.
"There is a special place in heaven for Justin Trudeau," he wrote.
FRIDAY'S MEETING
The comments came a day after Trump said NAFTA negotiators were "pretty close" to agreeing on some kind of sunset clause, a sticking point in talks -- but also after the dispute developed between the U.S. president and Trudeau.
"Two things can happen on NAFTA. We'll either leave it the way it is as a threesome deal" and "change it very substantially," Trump said Saturday in La Malbaie, Quebec, speaking to reporters before departing the G-7 leaders' meeting. Otherwise, "we're going to make a deal directly with Canada, directly with Mexico."
NAFTA was a key topic when Trump held a bilateral meeting with Trudeau on Friday, with Trump later saying they had a "very, very good meeting." A frenzied effort in May to reach a deal that could pass the current U.S. Congress by the end of this year has stalled, in part after Trudeau's final push ran up against Trump's insistence on a five-year sunset clause, which would see the pact renegotiated or killed after five years.
Any NAFTA deal will have a sunset provision of some kind, Trump said Saturday, though he indicated some people are pushing against a five-year time frame. "We're pretty close" on the sunset provision, he said.
The president also signaled that his NAFTA partners would pay a bigger price if there's no agreement.
Kudlow said the U.S. participated in G-7 talks and bilateral talks on NAFTA in good faith and that Trump had been "charming." But the president broadsided his allies after leaving the meeting by disavowing a joint statement the U.S. had agreed to, criticizing Trudeau and vowing tariffs on automobiles.
Freeland said Sunday that NAFTA talks are continuing, and that Canada believes "economic common sense will prevail" in the end. Freeland told reporters in Quebec City that she had a constructive meeting at the G-7 with Lighthizer, and would speak with him again on Sunday.
Information for this article was contributed by Josh Wingrove, Toluse Olorunnipa, Jennifer Epstein, Ben Brody, Mark Niquette, Sarah McGregor, Kitty Donaldson, Naomi Kresge, Carol Matlack and and Arne Delfs of Bloomberg News; by Damian Paletta, Joel Achenbach and Paige Winfield Cunningham of The Washington Post; and by Rob Gillies, Ken Thomas and Catherline Lucey of The Associated Press.
A Section on 06/11/2018