Canadian foreign policy has shifted from finger-wagging to a brass-knuckles realism that puts the national interest ahead of all else

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The re-election of Donald Trump has prompted an apparent shift in Canadian foreign policy: from the finger-wagging, values-based approach so familiar over the past nine years, to a new brass-knuckles realism that puts the national interest ahead of all other considerations.

How else to explain Chrystia Freeland giving one of our largest trading partners the equivalent of a sharp kick in the guts?

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The deputy prime minister said this week that Canada will not be a back door to North America for Chinese goods.

“The same cannot be said of Mexico,” she said, adding that the concerns of Trump supporters about unfairly traded Chinese goods are “legitimate” and that Canada, as a partner in the USMCA trade agreement “shares those concerns.”

It is a marked shift from Trump’s first term in office, when Canada and Mexico presented a united front to the Americans — right up until the moment the Mexicans negotiated a separate bilateral deal that piled the pressure on Ottawa to jump aboard.

Early in the negotiations, Trump wanted Canada to join him to gang up on Mexico and force auto jobs north.

But Freeland and Justin Trudeau resisted, insisting the new NAFTA would be a three-country agreement — only to be thrown under the bus by the Mexicans.
Lessons have clearly been learned.

Canada has aligned with the Americans in slapping a 100 per cent tariff on Chinese EVs and a 25 per cent duty on steel and aluminum.

Meanwhile, the........

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