By all accounts, President Obama is raring to go after Donald Trump, who in so many ways represents his political antithesis. Obama has already taken a few swipes at Trump, such as in his defense of an internationalist foreign policy during an address to Air Force graduates. But it was in Ottawa this week that the president offered the most extended preview of the arguments he’ll make to American voters.

It was auspicious that the occasion for his visit was the North American Leaders’ Summit, since it’s an outgrowth of NAFTA, a free trade agreement whose repeal has become the center of Trump’s economic platform. Obama offered two lines of critique: a narrower one targeting Trump’s credentials as a populist and, more interestingly, a broader analysis of Trumpism as partly a consequence of globalization, which needs to be answered with a stronger social welfare state.

In a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, Obama raised the issue of Trump’s supposed populism. He didn’t name Trump explicitly but the presumptive Republican nominee was clearly the intended object of derision when Obama tried to distinguish between populism and xenophobia:

Somebody else who has never shown any regard for workers, has never fought on behalf of social justice issues or making sure that poor kids are getting a decent shot at life or have healthcare—in fact, have worked against economic opportunity for workers and ordinary people—they don’t suddenly become a populist because they say something controversial in order to win votes. That’s not the measure of populism. That’s nativism or xenophobia or worse. Or it’s just cynicism. So, I would just advise everybody to be careful about suddenly attributing to whoever pops up at a time of economic anxiety the label that they’re populist.

Obama drew a distinction between pseudo-populism and a genuine populism that aims to improve the lot of working people, such as the populism that animated Bernie Sanders’s campaign.



Later that day, while speaking to the Canadian Parliament, Obama took a more sweeping approach. He used the Brexit vote as an example of how globalism was leaving many behind and opening the door to a politics of xenophobia. Trump was again unnamed but clearly invoked. According to Obama: