Chrystia Freeland

Wednesday December 11, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday December 11, 2019

NAFTA, Impeachment: A Donald Trump doubleheader

“I want you to do us a favour,” said Donald Trump, and Nancy Pelosi complied on Tuesday, finally releasing the parking brake from a revised North American Free Trade Agreement and giving the president a glut of gloat-able, quotable material to use on the re-election trail about what an Artful Dealer he is.

July 27, 2018

Announcement of the replacement for what Trump often has called “the worst trade deal in the history of the world” came on the same morning of the same day that the same Madame Speaker – using the word “solemn” twice in her first sentence – announced the two specific, alleged “high crimes” for which the president will be tried and quickly acquitted by his cowed Republican allies in the U.S. Senate next month.

During any other presidency, such a contradiction would be considered dizzily discombobulating, but this is Trump. Adding to the vertigo, the president capped this bestest awfulest day by gaggling in the Oval Office with Sergei Victorovich Lavrov, the amiable foreign minister of Russia, which got America into this mess in the first place.

November 19, 2019

Known to the White House as the “US-Mexico-Canada Agreement” and the most significant legislative achievement of Trump’s presidency since his trillion-dollar tax cuts of Christmas, 2017, the tri-national treaty will impact the continent’s factories and farms long after Trump has passed from the scene, be it by a hostile Senate vote or defeat at the totally-rigged ballot boxes. Most of its last-second amendments relate to the enforcement of labour standards in Mexican factories.

“It could be perishable,” Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol Tuesday morning, explaining why she chose to move USMCA at the same hour that she has been labelling the president “a clear and present danger” to the survival of the republic.

November 16, 2019

That it was the “deranged Democrats” who actually forged the final rewrite of the new-NAFTA, colluding with union groups to get the Mexican government to agree to a quid pro quo of freer trade in exchange for higher wages and tighter environmental and enforcement causes, is unlikely to be a feature of Trump’s stump speech between now and November. The only clause that he is likely to invoke is himself as Santa, once again squeezing his bulk down the national chimney with jobs, jobs, jobs.

Meanwhile, the president blithely romped along the rim of constitutional death Tuesday, tweeting that his life-long nemesis, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler “just said that I ‘pressured Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 Election.’ Ridiculous, and he knows that is not true. Both the President & Foreign Minister of Ukraine said, many times, that there ‘WAS NO PRESSURE.’ Nadler and the Dems know this, but refuse to acknowledge!” 

Trump then flew to swing-state Pennsylvania for a rally with the deplored. (MacLean’s) 

Thursday November 21, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday November 21, 2019

Why Chrystia Freeland is the indispensable Trudeau cabinet minister

Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland have been very good for each other. Not for the first time, the future of the Liberal government — and a lot else — seem to be riding on the two of them finding success together.

August 28, 2018

“She is someone with whom I worked very, very closely, and with great success, on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, with the challenges of the American administration,” Trudeau said Wednesday afternoon, using the most delicate language possible to describe the experience of dealing with Donald Trump’s White House.

“We know that as we move forward on issues that matter across the country, like energy and the environment and other large issues, we will have to engage in a strong and positive way with different orders of government.”

During a phone call with Trudeau in the summer of 2018, at perhaps the most contentious moment of the prolonged struggle over NAFTA, Trump described Freeland as a “nasty woman.” In some circles, that’s a badge of honour in its own right.

But Freeland came away from that prolonged drama with a claim to having played a pivotal role in preserving this country’s most important trading relationship at a moment of unprecedented instability.

May 16, 2019

Her reward is the title of “deputy prime minister” and responsibility for helping to hold together the world’s largest democratic federation at a time of profound change and uncertainty.

It’s the culmination of a political career that began six years ago when Trudeau and his top advisers recruited Freeland to run in a by-election in Toronto Centre. Trudeau had become Liberal leader just six months earlier and Freeland became his first star candidate — the first evidence that Trudeau could attract smart and accomplished people to serve alongside him.

Freeland was something like the platonic ideal of a Liberal candidate: a Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar who had become an internationally recognized journalist and author in New York. And while the Conservatives were scoffing that Trudeau wasn’t ready to lead, Freeland was ready to line up behind him.

From Trudeau’s perspective, not all of his star recruits worked out for the best (Jody Wilson-Raybould, most notably) but Freeland became central and integral to his government.

A year before she joined the Liberals, Freeland published her second book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. Once in the fold, she was an important voice in shaping a political agenda focused on increasing taxes on the wealthiest and building supports for the middle class.

October 20, 2016

In Trudeau’s first cabinet, she was made international trade minister. There, she dragged a free trade deal with Europe to completion — famously displaying “visible emotion” during the final push. She was not a natural politician but she slowly got better at it. (CBC) 

 

Thursday May 16, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 16, 2019

Freeland renews push to remove steel, aluminum tariffs during Washington trip

July 27, 2018

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland is bound for Washington to meet with Trump trade czar Robert Lighthizer in a renewed push to get punitive steel and aluminum tariffs lifted.

The meeting at the United States trade representative’s Washington office is to take place on Wednesday but Freeland will also venture to Capitol Hill for a meeting with the influential Republican chair of the Senate finance committee, Chuck Grassley.

“We continue to lobby very assertively for the lifting of the tariffs. We’re at a point where we need to do everything we can and talk to everyone we can about why we see these as unjust,” a senior government source said Tuesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing dispute.

June 1, 2018

The meetings come after a pair of telephone calls on consecutive days late last week between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in which the controversial 25-per-cent duty on Canadian steel and 10-per-cent levy on aluminum was a major subject of conversation.

On Tuesday, Grassley suggested to reporters in a conference call that an end to the tariffs might be close. Last month, Grassley tweeted that Trump must remove the tariffs before the new North American trade deal can be ratified.

Trump imposed them in the first place using a section of U.S. trade law that gives the president powers to put duties on imports on national-security grounds.

Freeland, Trudeau and others in Canadian government have derided the tariffs as absurd, illegal and insulting.

But Freeland has said she’s heartened by the recent comments of both Republican and Democratic American lawmakers who say the new North American trade agreement that includes Mexico can’t be ratified with the “Section 232” tariffs in place. (Global)

 

Saturday January 26, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday January 26, 2019

Canada ramps up pressure on Venezuela’s Maduro

Top federal officials, perhaps Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself, will be reaching out to key European allies to encourage them to put more pressure on Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, CTV News has learned.

August 28, 2018

The news comes as Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Belgium threatened to recognize Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaido as the nation’s interim president if elections aren’t called within eight days.

Canada, the United States and 10 other countries in the Lima Group have already recognized Guaido, who declared himself interim president of the troubled South American country on Wednesday.

Canada played a key role in organizing that declaration. On Saturday, Trudeau spoke with Colombian Ivan Duque Marquez about the situation.

Canada’s representative to the UN, Marc-Andree Blanchard, told a special meeting of the UN Security Council that Canada has “firmly rejected Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate claim to power,” citing “fraudulent” elections last year.

Russia, meanwhile, accused Canada and the U.S. of encouraging a coup.

For the estimated three million people who have fled Venezuela’s economic and political crisis in recent years, the growing support for Guaido gives them hope that they will one day be able to return home.

William Mesa is a medical student who was forced to leave Venezuela for Colombia four years ago.

“Many Venezuelans were eating on the streets from the garbage,” he told CTV’s Omar Sachedina in Bogota.

In addition to his studies, Mesa also volunteers at a clothing donation facility that helps Venezuelan newcomers, just as he was helped when he fled from neighbouring country. (CTV News) 

 

Tuesday October 2, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday October 2, 2018

President Trump creates crises, then claims credit for solving them

September 5, 2018

President Trump’s specialty is to create crises and then claim credit for solving them. Last year, for example, he ratcheted up the rhetoric against Kim Jong Un — a.k.a. “Little Rocket Man” — threatening to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea. Trump now claims he and Kim “fell in love” after Kim sent him “beautiful letters,” and that, were it not for this bromance, “you’d be in a war” and “millions of people would have been killed.” In reality, no one thought a second Korean War was likely before Trump took office. That only became a serious risk because of his unhinged rhetoric.

Trump has applied this same template to the North

August 28, 2018

American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he spent years lambasting as “the worst trade deal ever approved.” According to Bob Woodward’s book “Fear: Trump in the White House,” Trump was on the verge of pulling out of NAFTA in April 2017, and had to be talked back from the brink by senior aides. He grudgingly remained in the deal while launching high-pressure negotiations to rework it.

Lo and behold, just ahead of a U.S.-imposed deadline on Sunday night, the United States, Mexico and Canada agreed on a revamped NAFTA. Trump triumphantly proclaimed on Twitter that this was a “wonderful new Trade Deal,” “historic,” and “a great deal for all three countries.” “NAFTA is dead,” said White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. Long live the new United States-Canada-Mexico Agreement (USMCA).

June 13, 2018

In fact, the biggest change is the name of the trade deal, and it is not an improvement. Just try saying “USMCA.” It does not roll off the tongue the way “NAFTA” did. As for the substance, my Council on Foreign Relations colleague Benn Steil rightly describes the new agreement as “little more than margin edits.”

Trump’s biggest victory was in opening up slightly more of the Canadian dairy market for U.S. exports. This has long been an obsession for him. He complained in June: “Canada charges the U.S. a 270% tariff on Dairy Products! They didn’t tell you that, did they? Not fair to our farmers.” Trump was right about the Canadian tariffs. What he didn’t mention is that the United States still ran a $474 million dairy surplus last year, with U.S. farmers selling five times more dairy goods to Canada than U.S. consumers bought from Canada. In any case, milk products represent just 0.06 percent of U.S.-Canada trade, 99 percent of which was already tariff-free. (Source: Washington Post)