Liberal MP and leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland speaks with reporters in Ottawa, on Dec. 10, 2024.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
“I want to let you in on a little secret,” says Chrystia Freeland in her video pitch to become the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. “Donald Trump doesn’t like me very much.”
This is, according to the person hoping to steer the country through the next four years of Mr. Trump’s recalcitrant tumult, to her advantage. “I’m a tough negotiator,” she continues, noting her success in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement during the first Trump term. “I know what we need to do to win that fight again.”
This is the theme of Ms. Freeland’s campaign; a choice likely made as much by necessity as strategic value. Ms. Freeland can’t exactly run on “change” after riding in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s sidecar for the past near-decade, nor can she coast on her government’s record when the public has been clear about wanting to push the cavalry off the road. So Ms. Freeland must focus on an external foil, positioning herself as the candidate best positioned to thwart it: “Trump hates me; make me Prime Minister.”
It’s a good strategy for the Liberal leadership race, and the Liberal leadership race only. Indeed, the only name that garners as much reflexive disdain as “Pierre Poilievre” in Liberal circles is “Donald Trump,” and the timing is right with the threatened imposition of Mr. Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs just over a week away.
Ms. Freeland’s record on negotiation is proven, and that will matter to Liberal members. As trade minister, she helped secure the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), and as foreign affairs minister, she steered Canada through the NAFTA renegotiations, after which we emerged mostly unscathed. If Ms. Freeland can make Mr. Trump the ballot question for the leadership race, she has a good case to make that she is the answer. Mr. Trump will surely have just as much personal disdain for Mark Carney, a clean-cut, wealthy central banker, as he already does for the journalist-turned-politician who was Mr. Trudeau’s second-in-command, so it would be reasonable for Liberals to opt for the one who has demonstrated she can get it done.
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But outside of the silo of the Liberal ecosystem, Mr. Trump’s loathing – and it is loathing, he has been quite public about that – of Ms. Freeland will and should be perceived as an incorrigible weakness, both for her as a negotiator and for Canada’s interests.
Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton has provided specific examples of the President allowing his personal feelings toward world leaders dictate his policies and objectives. He has cited Mr. Trump’s affection for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for example, as part of the reason for his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria in 2019 during Turkey’s military operation in the region. He has also mentioned Mr. Trump’s contempt for former German chancellor Angela Merkel and British prime minister Theresa May.
Ms. Freeland is selling herself as someone who is unafraid to stand up to Mr. Trump, and that is true. In 2018, when she was named Diplomat of the Year by Foreign Policy magazine, Ms. Freeland gave a 25-minute speech arguing that “authoritarianism is on the march,” and not-so-subtly outlining the ways that “homegrown anti-democratic movements” are on the rise in Western nations. A few months later, she appeared on a panel called “Taking on the Tyrant,” which opened with a video montage that included Mr. Trump. The President noticed, and was not happy; he told a crowd at a subsequent fundraiser that Ms. Freeland “hates America.” He called her a “nasty woman” in a phone call to Mr. Trudeau. Ms. Freeland might be unafraid to stand up to Mr. Trump, but that certainly doesn’t mean he respects her; indeed, he is the bully holding her at a distance by her forehead as she feverishly right- and left-hooks into the air. “Standing up” to Mr. Trump on the elite panel circuit might feel good, but it confers no strategic advantage – quite the opposite, in fact.
The first time Mr. Trump was president, his inner circle included at least some (ephemerally employed) establishment advisers and directors who could temper some of his emotionally driven impulses, including on foreign policy. The President has made clear that, this time, he has no intention of entertaining conventional expectations. Instead, he will be cocooned by sycophants content to indulge his every impulse, which likely will include rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies, even if whole countries might serve as collateral damage. That’s why his personal dislike for Ms. Freeland should be perceived as a grievous anchor on her campaign, not an advantage. Although admitting that is to concede that the virtue of her candidacy is, essentially, nothing.