The president of the European Commission has taken a thinly veiled swipe at Donald Trump as she encouraged Canada to build closer trade ties with Europe in response to its increasingly toxic relationship with the U.S.
Trump sparked a trade war last month with America’s second-largest trading partner after he imposed crushing import tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian goods.
The president and his administration have also angered Canadians by threatening to annex their country as the 51st U.S. state, insulting members of the Canadian military, and inventing a bogus new name for Lake Ontario—“Lake America.”
Those provocations have pushed Canada closer to Europe, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen inviting Canada on Wednesday to become the EU’s first “associate member,” the AP reported.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was sitting in the front row of von der Leyen’s annual State of the European Union address when she extended the invitation—and appeared to take aim at Trump.
“Above all, dear Mark, Europe and Canada believe in democracy,” she said. “We believe that power does not belong to the strongest, the richest, or the loudest, but to all of us. That democracies have the freedom to choose with whom to work.”
Canada and the EU will build on their existing free trade agreement, called CETA, and create a broader “Alliance for the Future” aimed at guaranteeing “a common prosperity and economic security space,” she announced, according to the AP.
The partnership will cover advanced manufacturing, technology, defense production, the Arctic, energy, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity, she added.
Although she didn’t identify Trump by name, von der Leyen made a point of saying, “This is a partnership not against anyone else, but for our common strength.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
The Canadian premier received a standing ovation Wednesday from European lawmakers and is scheduled to speak Thursday at the European Parliament.
A day earlier, Carney had said that economic integration was once viewed largely as an asset but is increasingly “being used as a weapon by certain countries.”
After long-running trade talks between Canada and the U.S. broke down in late August, Trump imposed a 50-percent tariff on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods under a never-before-used provision of the Depression-era Tariff Act of 1930.
The duties are a type of import tax paid by American companies, which must either eat the additional costs or pass them on to consumers.
Carney retaliated by doubling existing counter-tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum, and imposing new duties on several classes of American products.
The counter-tariffs appear to target products made in hotly contested Republican-held congressional districts that will help determine which party controls Congress after November’s midterm elections, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Carney also drew Trump’s ire back in January when he urged middle powers to work together instead of competing for favor “in a world of great-power rivalry.”
