The United States and Canada were headed towards a trade and diplomatic crisis as their leaders traded accusations after the G7 summit.
Top White House advisers lashed out at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a day after US President Trump called him “very dishonest and weak.”
The spat drew in Germany and France, who sharply criticized Trump’s decision to abruptly withdraw his support for a Group of Seven communique hammered out at a Canadian summit on Saturday, accusing him of destroying trust and acting inconsistently.
Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland responded to the White House comments by saying that Canada will retaliate to US tariffs in a measured and reciprocal way and that Canada will always be willing to talk.
“Canada does not conduct its diplomacy through ad hominem attacks ... and we refrain particularly from ad hominem attacks when it comes from a close ally,” Freeland told reporters in Quebec City on Sunday.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow accused Trudeau of betraying Trump with “polarizing” statements on trade policy that risked making the US leader look weak ahead of a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Hours after Trump withdrew his support for the joint statement and attacked Trudeau, Kudlow and trade adviser Peter Navarro drove the message home on Sunday morning news shows in an extraordinary assault on a close US ally and neighbor.
“(Trudeau) really kind of stabbed us in the back,” Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council who had accompanied Trump to the summit of wealthy nations on Saturday, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Navarro told “Fox News Sunday”: “There is a special place in hell for any leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door and that’s what bad-faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference, that’s what weak dishonest Justin Trudeau did.”
Trudeau, in Quebec City for bilateral meetings with non-G7 leaders after the summit, did not respond to reporter questions as he arrived. He ignored the barbs from Trump's advisors, tweeting a link to the G7 communique and hailing the "historic and important agreement we all reached."
"That's what matters," he wrote.
When Trump’s tweets withdrawing support from the G7 statement hit on Saturday, the prime minister’s office said Trudeau had not said anything in his closing news conference he has not said to Trump before.
Freeland told reporters that she had met with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on Friday and would speak to him later on Sunday, adding that she believes a deal to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement is still possible.
“We are convinced that a modernization is perfectly possible, we are convinced that common sense will triumph,” she said.
Some 75 percent of Canadian exports go to the United States, making Canada uniquely vulnerable to a US trade war.
Having left the G7 summit in Canada early, Trump’s announcement on Twitter that he was backing out of the joint communique torpedoed what appeared to be a fragile consensus on a trade dispute between Washington and its top allies.
“The G7 was a forum for friends – democracies with the same value system – to discuss issues of common interest. Now there is a question mark over that. But it did not start with this G7, but with the election of Donald Trump,” said a European official.
Trump also said he might double down on import tariffs by hitting the sensitive auto industry, throwing the G7’s efforts to show a united front into disarray.
The outburst against Trudeau, and by association the other G7 members, is only the latest incident in which Trump has clashed with America's closest allies, even as he has had warm words for autocrats like Kim and Russia's Vladimir Putin.
French President Emmanuel Macron's office reacted Sunday by saying that "international cooperation cannot be dictated by fits of anger and throwaway remarks."
Reneging on the commitments agreed in the communique showed "incoherence and inconsistency," it said in a statement.
And German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas tweeted Sunday that Trump had partly "destroyed" Washington's trusting relationship with Europe by pulling out of the joint communique.
When Trump left Quebec, it was thought that a compromise had been reached, despite the tension and the determination of European leaders Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to push back against the US president's protectionist policies.
