WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Sunday accused Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of undermining the US and its allies with comments he made at the G7 summit.
“It was a betrayal,” Kudlow said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Kudlow was speaking following the G7 summit in Canada on Saturday. As Trump flew from the summit with US allies to a planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, he lashed out at Trudeaufor what he said were his “false statements” at a news conference and said the US would not endorse the G7 communique, a negotiated statement on shared priorities among the group.
Although it is unclear which of Trudeau’s statements Trump was calling false, Trudeau said in the news conference Saturday that Canada will “move forward with retaliatory measures” on July 1 in response to the Trump administration’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, the European Union and Mexico.
“I have made it very clear to the President that it is not something we relish doing, but it something that we absolutely will do,” Trudeau said. “Canadians, we’re polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.”
In his interview Sunday, Kudlow accused Trudeau of making his comments for “domestic political consumption” and doing “a great disservice to the whole G7.”
“He really kind of stabbed us in the back,” Kudlow said.
Kudlow said the US had spent the summit negotiating in “good faith” with Trudeau and the other assembled leaders, and that the US had planned to sign the communique until Trudeau’s news conference, which Kudlow called a “sophomoric play.”
Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, directed a series of stinging comments at Trudeau on “Fox News Sunday.”
“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,” Navarro said. “And that’s what bad faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference. That’s what weak, dishonest Justin Trudeau did, and that comes right from Air Force One.”
Navarro added that while these were his own words, they reflected the “the sentiment that was on Air Force One.” Navarro also said Trump attending the G7 in Canada was a “courtesy” to Trudeau and that the President had “bigger things on his plate” in Singapore.
“He did him a favor,” Navarro said. “He was even willing to sign that socialist communique.”
