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Trudeau has reason to raise a glass himself, now that this rush of pent-up anti-Trump Canadian catharsis has obscured how much he too is to blame for this trade-war disaster

“There’s a bit of a patriotic boost going on these past few days,” chuckled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at an event hosted the other day by the supply-managed farmers who have been celebrating that we’re all blaming Trump for this mess instead of their politically powerful protectionist racket, the primary culprit. They were even giving out free milk and eggs near Parliament Hill, Tuesday. Trudeau has reason to raise a glass himself, now that this rush of pent-up anti-Trump Canadian catharsis has obscured how much he too is to blame for this trade-war disaster.

Largely missed in the sudden and furious reaction to Trump’s salty tweets Sunday was a report by CBC’s Rob Russo on The National that night, which clarifies just how wonderfully it appears trade talks were going between Canada and the U.S. That is, until Trudeau held his post-G7 press conference to remind Trump that Canada would “not be pushed around” by any American president and called the president’s treatment of Canada “kind of insulting.”

Trudeau wasn’t wrong, of course, but his comments were clearly ill-timed. Russo reported that Trump had offered a major giveaway to Trudeau in a NAFTA meeting on the G7 sidelines, finally agreeing to waive his longstanding demand for a sunset clause, the automatic expiry of the deal if it wasn’t renewed every five years, which had been one of the last sticking points. Russo said that Trump’s sudden concession was “surprising (to) his own chief negotiator, according to people who were there, and people (there) think that it’s great.” At the end of the summit, with a NAFTA deal perhaps within grasp, the celebrating was underway. Then came the news conference.