A former senior economic adviser to President Donald Trump once gave Canadian negotiators a very direct warning about what they could expect at the bargaining table, according to former Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.
Writing in The Atlantic, Freeland wrote that Gary Cohn, who at the time was a senior economic adviser, spoke to her at a White House meeting during the first term of Trump’s presidency when Canada and the United States were disputing the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“You’re definitely going to get s——. The only question is whether you get s—— with a kiss,” Cohn told Freeland, per her account of the encounter.
Freeland, who was also the minister of international trade for Canada, explained the situation in the essay drawn from her new book, Unreliable Boyfriend. She stated that Canadian officials had started to prepare for the possibility of a Trump victory in 2016 and had therefore drawn up a strategy for meeting his demands when he took office.
That strategy involved looking for areas of agreement, establishing relationships with American officials and political figures outside the White House and refusing to yield when Canada thought its economic interests were at stake.
Freeland stated that pressure was exerted by the Canadian government at home to accept a greater number of Washington’s demands as the negotiations continued. When asked about her response at the time, she remembered saying, “Capitulation is not a negotiating strategy.”
The disagreement eventually led to the creation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which took the place of NAFTA during Trump’s first term; however, Canada’s trade relations with Washington have once again worsened since Trump returned to office.
On Tuesday, the trade dispute intensified since U.S. restrictions on nearly one billion dollars’ worth of Canadian imports came into force. These measures prohibit the import of certain Canadian alcoholic drinks, dairy products and motorcycles as a response to Canada’s imposition of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods. The United States had already introduced tariffs as high as 50 percent on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian products after the trade negotiations broke down in August.
Last week, Jamieson Greer, who is the U.S. Trade Representative, stated that Washington was at ease with the present situation and did not feel any pressure to come to a quick agreement with Ottawa.
The most recent disagreement has forced Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to seek methods of decreasing Canada’s reliance on trade with the United States, while at the same time leaving the future of the USMCA in doubt.
On the basis of her experience during her first term, Freeland claimed that Canada had only achieved progress after standing up to pressure and responding to U.S. tariffs. Her explanation implies that the private warning coming from within Trump’s own White House was clearly evident well before the present dispute.