The Trump administration is openly hostile toward America’s allies and in many cases it is willing to sacrifice America’s own interests to harm its allies. This is unprecedented, and I think it follows logically that the risk to America’s allies has increased significantly. If one party is openly out to harm you and takes credible steps to that end, I think it necessarily means an elevated degree of risk.
The US government under Donald Trump openly attacked an ally in the Oval yesterday in full view of the press and the world. They are openly threatening Canada with tariffs right now. Canada has been our closest, most steadfast ally in the world. These are not narrow and contested notions of harm. Ukraine was invaded, and Donald Trump and JD Vance try to bully their president in the Oval? Canada hasn’t done a single thing to us and we stab them in the back? Our Canadian brothers and sisters are pissed, and they are right to be.
As a Canadian we absolutely view the Trump administration as openly hostile towards us, and we are certainly one of America’s (former?) allies. Our entirely political discourse has pivoted to how can we counter the threat from the US. The threat to sovereignty first, the threat to our economy second.
There’s currently a leadership race going on for the liberal party (the current government). You can listen to a debate from a few days ago if you want to see what I mean. Here’s a quote from that debate from Christia Freeland (former deputy prime minister, finance minister, minister of foreign affairs, minister of intergovernmental affairs, and minister of international trade — not all at the same time of course) that I think captures the mood well.
It’s a great question because what is different about this unleashed and empowered President Trump is he is clearly threatening our sovereignty, and we need to respond.
For the first time since the Second World War, rather than guaranteeing the rules-based order, the U.S. is turning predator.
And so what Canada needs to do is work closely with our democratic allies, our military allies. I’ve been Foreign Minister. I know how to do that. That’s why I will start with our Nordic partners, specifically Denmark, which is also being threatened, and our European NATO allies.
I will be sure that France and Britain were there who possess nuclear weapons, and I would be working urgently with those partners to build a closer security relationship that guarantees our security in a time when the United States can be a threat.
And I would also crucially reach out to our Asian democratic partners: Japan, South Korea, Australia. They need to be part of the conversation too.
We need to be ready for a world where the U.S. is not the leader of the free world anymore. Canada can be and must be a leader in building this new order. Our allies are looking to us, and if we do this, we’ll make ourselves safer as well.
(Youtube transcript ran through Claude to turn it into paragraphs and de-capitalize it.)