President Donald Trump says Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ‘learned’ from the mistake of criticizing him and it’s going to cost Canada ‘a lot of money.’
Speaking at a press conference in Singapore on Tuesday, Trump said he decided to back out of the G7 communique after watching Trudeau’s closing summit news conference, at which the prime minister warned that Canada would not be pushed around on tariffs – a point Trudeau had made several times before.
‘He’ll learn that’s going to cost a lot of money for the people of Canada. He’ll learn, he can’t do that,’ Trump said.
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during a press conference after his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa Island, Singapore
President Donald Trump waves after Air Force One arrived at Paya Lebar Air Base in Singapore
Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau holds a news conference upon the conclusion of the G7 Summit in La Malbaie, Charlevoix, Quebec, Canada
The president also said the Canadian leader must not have realized that Trump had televisions on Air Force One, allowing him to monitor Trudeau’s news conference.
‘I think that Justin probably didn’t know that Air Force One has about 20 televisions,’ he said.
Trump recalled watching Trudeau’s press conference in an interview with ABC News.
‘He talked about how they won’t be bullied. And I said ‘What’s this all about? He didn’t do that to my face, what’s this all about?’ But here’s what the story is: We have been taken advantage of as a country for decades by friends and enemies both,’ Trump said. ‘Our trade is a disaster, our trade deals.’
Trump’s attack on one of America’s oldest allies came as he praised North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un as smart, talented and loved.
‘He is very talented. Anybody that takes over a situation like he did, at 26 years of age, and is able to run it,’ Trump said at his press conference. ‘I don’t say he was nice or I don’t say anything about it – he ran it. Very few people, at that age – you can take one out of ten thousand, probably, couldn’t do it.’
The president told ABC News that Kim will be very happy with the agreement the two men signed in Singapore on Tuesday.
‘He’s going to be happy. His country does love him. His people, you see the fervor. They have a great fervor,’ he said.
And he told Voice of America that Kim is a funny guy.
‘He’s got a great personality. He’s a funny guy, he’s very smart, he’s a great negotiator,’ Trump said. ‘He loves his people, not that I’m surprised by that, but he loves his people.’
At his press conference at the end of his summit with Kim, Trump kept up his feud with America’s closest allies over trade, saying he could not allow them to continue taking advantage of the United States.
Although he insisted he had a good relationship with Trudeau, Trump took another dig at him, saying the United States had a big trade deficit with Canada and that ‘a little balance’ was needed.
President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference after the meeting with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un as part of the U.S.-North Korea summit
President Trump and Justin Trudeau talk at the G7 meeting
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks after the G7 meeting
‘We are being taken advantage of by virtually every one of those countries,’ Trump told a news conference on Tuesday. ‘Look, countries cannot continue to take advantage of us on trade.
The escalating clash with Trudeau cast a shadow over the Trump’s nuclear talks with Kim and led critics to question why the president was bashing U.S. partners while appearing to cosy up to one of Washington’s bitterest long-time foes.
‘I have a good relationship with Justin. And I have a, I think, a very good relationship with Chairman Kim right now,’ Trump said.
Trump fired off a volley of tweets on Monday further venting anger at NATO allies, the European Union and Trudeau. Some of Trump’s aides also lashed out at the Canadian prime minister.
Trump’s extraordinary outburst in recent days appeared aimed at striking a chord with voters who support his ‘America First’ agenda. ‘Not fair to the people of America! $800 billion trade deficit,’ he tweeted on Monday.
In the same set of tweets, Trump said: ‘Justin acts hurt when called out!’
On Tuesday, Trump said: ‘We have a big trade deficit with Canada … it’s close to $100 billion a year deal loss.’
However, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative has said the United States ran an $8.4 billion trade surplus with Canada in 2017.
Canadian officials have stressed the two countries’ extensive trading relationship and pointed out that Canada is the top export destination for 35 U.S. states and that 9 million jobs in the United States depend on trade with its northern neighbour.
The White House escalated the war of words against Trudeau before the summit began with Trump aides taking to the Sunday morning public affair shows to blast the Canadian prime minister.
‘He really kind of stabbed us in the back. He really, actually, you know: he did a great disservice to the whole G-7. He betrayed,’ White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ Sunday morning.
President Donald Trump meets North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore
Trump aides like Larry Kudlow went on the Sunday morning shows to criticize Trudeau
President Donald Trump answers questions about the summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un during a press conference at the Capella resort on Sentosa Island
President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un shake hands following a signing ceremony during their historic U.S.-North Korea summit
‘You just don’t behave that way. It’s a betrayal. Essentially double-crossing,’ Kudlow said of Trudeau’s challenge to the president on tariffs at the G7 summit in Canada.
He then said Trudeau was aiming to make Trump look weak ahead of his historic meeting with Kim. The president left the G7 summit early in order to fly to Singapore for that summit.
Trump ‘is not gonna let a Canadian prime minister push him around,’ Kudlow said. ‘He is not going to permit any show of weakness on a trip to negotiate with North Korea.’
‘He can’t put Trump in a position of being weak going into the North Korean talks. He can’t do that. And by the way, President Trump is not weak,’ he noted.
‘Kim must not see American weakness. It’s that short.’
Director of the White House National Trade Council Peter Navarro joined in the bashing.
‘There’s a special place in hell for any foreign 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,’ he said on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ ‘That’s what bad faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference.’
Navarro added: ‘To my friends in Canada, that was one of the worst political miscalculations of a Canadian leader in modern Canadian history.’
Navarro apologized for his remarks on Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported.
‘My job was to send a signal of strength,’ he said at a conference in Washington. ‘The problem was that in conveying that message I used language that was inappropriate.’
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland defended the prime minister on Sunday, saying that Canada doesn’t find attacks ‘appropriate or useful.’
‘Canada does not believe that ad hominem attacks are a particularly appropriate or useful way to conduct our relations with other countries,’ she said at a press conference.
The trade dispute was launched after Trump last week removed exemptions from steel and aluminum tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and the EU.
Canada responded by slapping tariffs on $12.8 billion worth of US exports, including metals, toilet paper, ball point pens and pizza.
‘We’re like the piggy bank that everybody is robbing,’ Trump said at a press conference as he departed the two-day meeting in La Malbaie, Quebec on Saturday.