美加关系剧变：从盟友到对抗，特朗普政策下的地缘政治重构

Ezra Klein: No country right now better reveals the transformation of the way the world sees America. The way we've turned from ally and partner to bully and predator than Canada. In late August, Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from trade talks with the Trump administration.

Mark Carney: Canada is becoming stronger and less dependent on America. We are already giving ourselves more than they can take away and we are just getting started.

Ezra Klein: He did so knowing that the retaliation could be ruinous for the Canadian economy. But it's also ruinous and revealing about the shambles of Donald Trump's foreign policy. The way that what Trump is doing is not getting America what Trump wanted. I mean, Trump wanted Canada to be the 51st state.

Donald Trump: They'll end up being the 51st state cuz it's the only way it works. You know, we don't need them, but they need us.

Ezra Klein: Instead, they might become an associate member of the European Union. Trump wanted to weaken China in the global sphere.

Donald Trump: You know, we're beating China. You know it. China knows it.

Ezra Klein: Now, Carney and Canada are negotiating deals and agreements with all manner of other countries, but including China. Including China in an effort to diversify away from America. And so now, America and Canada are hurdling towards this January deadline in which massive new tariffs will go into effect. So, who is this helping? And what does it mean not just for Canada, but for America, for our relationship with our neighbors, and for our relationship with the rest of the world?

From 2013 till earlier this year, Chrystia Freeland was a member of the Canadian Parliament. She served in a number of senior roles in the Canadian government, including Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, where she was a lead negotiator for Canada in trade talks with the first Trump administration. And now she's the author of a new book, Unreliable Boyfriend: An Insider's View of Dealing with a Chaotic Superpower, Plutocrats and Other Complicated People. She joins me now. Chrystia Freeland, welcome to the show.

Chrystia Freeland: It is wonderful to be with you, Ezra.

Ezra Klein: So, a recent Canadian poll found that 41% of Canadians consider the United States an enemy country. Enemy country. A Pew poll found more Canadians have a favorable impression of China than of the US. So I guess my question is how did we get here?

Chrystia Freeland: That is a brilliant place to start and no it is and no like it really is because I don't think Americans fully realize what has happened and I'm familiar with both of those polls. What is really interesting if you compare where we are today and where we were in 2023 and in 2023 obviously Canadians considered the United States to be an ally and considered China to be an adversary. And that position has actually flipped. And what's happened is Donald Trump and challenges to Canadian sovereignty and tariffs. That's what's happened.

Ezra Klein: There was a Trump administration before this one. I'm reliably informed. I have dim memories. How is that different?

Chrystia Freeland: So, I actually don't think President Trump is different. And I think it's important for people to remember he tried all this stuff in the first administration and he did a lot of it, right? He did impose tariffs on Canada and allies. The 232 steel and aluminum tariffs. He didn't threaten our sovereignty, but he said lots of mean things about us and about lots of Europeans. Um, remember he famously threw those candies at Angela Merkel at the G7 meeting. Yes, I was there.

Ezra Klein: He threw candies at Angela Merkel. Yes.

Chrystia Freeland: Yes.

Ezra Klein: I don't remember this at all.

Chrystia Freeland: Yeah. Yeah. No, no, he did. He did. It was at a G7 meeting that Canada was hosting and the G7 leaders were trying to convince the United States to sign on to what was like a totally historically milktoast everyone agreed with it clause about, you know, we together agree on the rules-based international order. They could not get Trump to agree. He really didn't like the fact that he was the only one disagreeing with the group. Angela Merkel, who I think was actually quite magnificent in how she handled Trump, was the one sort of sitting in the middle and as he left, he took some candies out of his pocket and actually threw them at Angela Merkel.

Ezra Klein: When you say she was when you say she was magnificent at how she handled Trump, how did she handle Trump?

Chrystia Freeland: So, I think she got it right. Angela, the former chancellor of Germany for people who are less up on German politics. Her view and I think this was shaped by the many years she spent dealing with Vladimir Putin who could be insulting and demeaning and really try to knock her off her game. He knew she was frightened of dogs and so he would bring in a dog sometimes in the meeting. So she was kind of used to

Ezra Klein: Yeah. Putin does a lot of psychological warfare kind of things.

Chrystia Freeland: Yeah. Yeah. So she was kind of used to dealing with bullies and her approach I think shaped by that to President Trump was to be what you would say in French is correct. Like to be just cool, calm, not to try to be sycophantic, not to try to curry favor, not also to fight him, but just to be very clear, rational in her approach. And you know, I think there are leaders who have thought, I can win this guy over, you know, I can give him the shiniest prize. I can give him a gold watch that's encrusted with diamonds. I can flatter him in the most outrageous way.

Ezra Klein: Who's had that strategy?

Chrystia Freeland: I think most people have tried it actually. And I think that strategy is in part based oddly on underestimating Trump, right? I think there are a lot of leaders who think Trump is dumber than they are. And so they think, well, I'll just sort of butter him up. I will outrageously flatter him and maybe I'll agree to some things he wants, but it'll just be on paper. It won't be real and it'll all be fine. I don't think that's the right approach.

I think a sort of cool calm, you know, during the first NAFTA negotiations our approach and you know a line I must have said a million times, maybe not a million but many many in public was, we do not escalate and we do not back down. And I think that kind of steady, I'm not going to suck up to you, I'm not going to be bullied by you, but also I'm not going to kind of raise the emotional register with you. I think that's the way to deal with the president.

Ezra Klein: What does what does the world in which this goes to full-on trade war or continues in full-on trade war look like? What can Canada's economy withstand what America is doing? And what is Canada's response to America given the size differential?

Chrystia Freeland: The first thing I would say is I think Canadians are very realistic about the fact that this is an asymmetric standoff, shall we say, or this is an asymmetric confrontation and it means it will be more painful for Canada. Canadians recognize that. But Canadians also really recognize the stakes. It matters more for us and I am really confident that Canadians will hold the line.

So we have been in a version of here before and the last time the United States imposed tariffs on Canada, we retaliated dollar for dollar. I was the minister responsible for that. And ultimately America dropped its tariffs. And the reason America dropped its tariffs was twofold. One, imposing tariffs on our exports to you actually hurt you. That that that's what is perverse about all of this is, you know, the notion that somehow America is better off when it imposes tariffs on Canadian aluminum is just perverse. We're actually doing you a favor by getting you to drop those tariffs because tariffs on Canadian aluminum are a tax on electricity. You yourselves are choosing to make electricity more expensive and you're also

Ezra Klein: explain the mechanism there.

Chrystia Freeland: Well, aluminum is basically electricity in solid form. That's all it is. That's why Quebec produces a lot of aluminum because it has cheap hydroelectricity. And when you put a 50% tariff on aluminum, you're putting a 50% tariff on electricity. The aluminum that Canada normally exports to the United States contains the amount

Chrystia Freeland: of electricity equivalent to [snorts] more than 450 data centers, equivalent to the output of half a dozen Hoover dams. It's a lot of power. And you are choosing voluntarily to say we're going to make that 50% more expensive. Like that's the whole absurdity of these tariff wars. When Trump says things we buy from Canada become more expensive, he's taxing things Americans buy. Right.

Ezra Klein: That that's the literal

Chrystia Freeland: that's like like that. Exactly. Like that's like the absurdity here is the initial thing that you want to do and you are seeking to do unopposed is actually bad for you.

Ezra Klein: But it's also bad for you,

Chrystia Freeland: right? For sure. For sure it is. Um but you are getting that pain. And one reason, and this is kind of a technical reason, Ezra, but I know that you're a wonky person. Um, one reason, one advantage Canada has in a trade fight with the United States. And one reason imposing tariffs on Canada is just so dumb is we mostly export intermediate goods to you. So the stuff that we sell you is mostly stuff you use to make stuff yourselves. And so by imposing tariffs on the stuff,

Ezra Klein: give some examples of intermediate goods.

Chrystia Freeland: So aluminum is an intermediate good. Very few people go to the store and say, "I'd like to buy a ton of aluminum." Um, aluminum is used by, you know, companies to build stuff. Um, another really good example is uh the softwood lumber that we export to you. Very few people just like buy the wood, but people maybe buy a house or buy a table. Pod [snorts] ash. Another great example. Um, farmers buy pod ash. I grew up on a farm, so um, but actually farmers don't even buy raw pod ash, but farmers buy pod ash turned into fertilizer. [snorts] Um, but everyone uses pod ash because we like to eat. So, you know, tariffs on Canadian goods make stuff in the United States more expensive. And then Canada's retaliation actually has an impact. It's true that the Canadian economy is smaller than the American one, obviously. It's true that Canada is more exposed to trade in general than the United States, obviously. [snorts] But we actually were your biggest market larger than China, Japan, and the UK combined.

Ezra Klein: So, can you describe because I think it's more for Americans thinking about what it might mean for for our economy, much like China targeted essential parts of the American manufacturing process with, you know, rare earth magnets and things of that nature. There seems to be uh a view on Canada's part that it can cause outsized pain by focusing on, you know, things like auto manufacturing.

Chrystia Freeland: Yeah. Look, this is trade policy 101. It's not something that Canada invented. It's what we did in 2018. And by the way, in 2018, we were joined by the EU, which was really important. And I would love if the EU came on board this time. [snorts] Um, in 2018 we were joined by the EU and by Mexico. Um, the way to retaliate is you try to do two things. Inflict maximum pain on your adversary. And I hate like even using those terms when it comes to the United States because Canadians like really do not wish Americans ill. They just want not to be the target of unjustified and illegal tariffs. But once you're in that situation, you want to inflict, let's say, maximum pressure on the other side and minimum pain on yourself. So the minimum pain on yourself is you try to avoid imposing tariffs on the intermediate goods. You don't want your own economy to suffer. You don't want your own manufacturers to suffer. you try to impose the counter tariffs on things that are easily substitutable. [snorts] Um, and then you try to target your retaliation so that it hits politically sensitive constituencies. So you look at who are the influential senators, who are the influential members of Congress, which are the swing states that the White House depends on, and you try to be sure that your retaliation is hitting there so that people recognize the tariffs are hurting them. So, Smucker's Jam. This was in 2018. Turned out to be a really great thing that we targeted made in Ohio. And I had a conversation with Shared Brown, who like you wouldn't have expected to be a defender of Trumpian trade policy. And I want to be clear, he was not. He is a great guy, was a great partner, and

Ezra Klein: [snorts]

Chrystia Freeland: ultimately supported uh our renegotiated deal. But at one point he said to me, "Could you guys ease off on Smucker's jam, please? It's like really hurting my constituents." And I said, "Shared, with all due respect, that's the point. We want your constituents to be complaining to you, and we want you to go out and say, "You guys might lose your job because of Trump's stupid trade war with Canada." And I'll give you one example of how this is starting to work. So, as you may have heard, there's a pretty important Senate race in Michigan.

Ezra Klein: I have heard that.

Chrystia Freeland: Yeah. Yeah. Um, the Republican candidate has done an ad where he is drinking Labbat's Canadian beer and he says how bad the tariffs are.

Campaign Ad: Drinking a Labat and watching the Red Wings. Man, it just doesn't get any more Michigan than that. And here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy. We need to end this tariff war now.

Chrystia Freeland: So the Republican guy who, you know, is part of a party that is imposing these tariffs is doing everything he can, including visual cues to say, "I'm on team Canada's side."

Ezra Klein: So you were central in the trade negotiations between Canada and America in the first Trump term. How did that resolve? Why did that not escalate into what we're seeing now?

Chrystia Freeland: Well, it did escalate actually,

Ezra Klein: but not to where we are now.

Chrystia Freeland: Not far off, actually. Uh the night before that trade retaliation went into force, President Trump called then Prime Minister Trudeau [snorts] and threatened him with the destruction of the Canadian economy if Canada went ahead. He told him he should fire me and called me a nasty woman. And [snorts] you know, I really give Justin Trudeau a lot of credit for holding his nerve. And you saw then what you're seeing now, which is that Canadians understood the stakes and Canadians supported that action. We did have, you know, an intense trade conflict and we got to a deal. and we got to a deal that Donald Trump said was the best trade deal ever that Nancy Pelosi supported too that Sherid Brown voted for. So we had the fight and we had a positive conclusion. One thing that really helped was we had Republican allies, you know, people like John McCain, people like Chuck Grassley. Even at the end of the day, Bob Lighheiser, who was the USR, um, and was someone with whom I had many tense moments, but at the end of the day, he is a very, very smart, very, very sophisticated trade negotiator [snorts] and he understood actually it is in the interests of the United States to have a trade agreement with Canada. And so I think for those reasons and with those voices on our side, we were able to get a deal.

Ezra Klein: So is this what you mean when you say that Trump was not that different between the two terms, but in the first term he had it from your description of this less control over the Republican party. There were more independent voices, you know, who had their own power bases uh much more so than there are today. Think of John McCain. You think of Paul Ryan for part of that. Um, and then Trump's staff [snorts] did not treat him in the way they do now as this great man of history who cannot be questioned and in fact should have his impulses accelerated that that there were people there who were also trying to guide and restrain Trump even if they agreed with him on some dimensions of what he wanted to do.

Chrystia Freeland: Yeah, I think that's right. And you know I think it's when you are the leader of a country or even a minister the job of the people around you is yes to help you accomplish the things you want to accomplish but also to stop you from doing dumb stuff. And sometimes the way to help you accomplish what you want to accomplish is to say no to you. You know, I would say the war in Iran is a great example. Um, President Trump would be much more effective had America not started that war of choice. And so people in his entourage uh had they managed to convince him not to wage that war, they would have been doing him a favor. And I think, you know, for sure

Guest: There's less of that. But the other thing I would say, Ezra, that is a big difference, and you're American. I'm not. So maybe you can explain this difference to me. I think this a big big difference is the capitulation to the president seems across all of America seems much more widespread than it was in the first Trump administration. And you know, inevitably that does seem to embolden the president. And for America's friends and allies, it makes people ask, is this just about the president or is this about the whole country?

Ezra Klein: I think that was truer in the first 8 months, 10 months broadly than it is now. I do think it happened.

Guest: But you think the tide is starting to turn?

Ezra Klein: I don't think that civil society, I don't think the Democratic Party, I don't think the country at large has been, you know, laying down before Trump in the way that much of it was what you saw with law firms and universities in the first months. I do think the biggest problem is the Republican party is. And when President Trump has a Republican majority in Congress and you have a political system where the check on the president is first and foremost a Congress jealous of its own prerogatives and committed to the national interest. If Congress is captured, if it is intimidated, there's no real check.

And so it's not like American society, as you know perfectly well, I think an amazing poll is that Prime Minister Mark Carney's tariff reprisals against Donald Trump are more popular with Americans than Donald Trump's tariffs on Canada are. I mean, literally in a trade war in polls, Americans are taking the Canadian side.

The other thing though, this is where I think you're a little bit underselling how different Trump 2 is from Trump one. Because even in the story you tell in the book, the trade negotiations in Trump 1 feel like they are about trade and they're ultimately resolved through questions of trade. And that may be true here, but the trade negotiations in Trump 2 seem like they are about dominance, tribute, how affronted Trump is, that Canada does not want to become the 51st state in a way that has not been easily solvable through say higher labor standards on auto manufacturing. Where that came from in Trump I think is an interesting question, but that has been much more present in Trump 2 than I think it was in Trump one.

Guest: You're totally right. And I think that it was always there. I think that there was always that, I'm not even going to call it latent, but it was more than that. There was always that drive to domination. But you're absolutely right that in this iteration it has become absolutely explicit and I do think that Trump's Washington, you know, their offer to the rest of the world is you choose either to be a vassal or fight your way to being an equal.

Ezra Klein: [snorts]

Guest: And for a country you kind of have to decide which lane are you going to pick. If you pick the vassal lane then I think be Delcy Rodríguez and you know negotiate the best possible terms of submission. Obviously that is never the lane that Canada would choose.

And so you know you said Ezra it's harder to know what to do. In some ways, it's easier because although the situation Canada finds itself in is dreadful, there is a very deep national consensus that given that our sovereignty is actually being questioned, the only thing for us to do is to stand up for ourselves. And you know, that's the view of the current liberal government. But Stephen Harper, who was a very long-serving conservative prime minister, said in early 2025, when the issue of sovereignty was first really being raised, he said Canada should be prepared to pay whatever the economic price is if it is about defending our sovereignty. So, and I think I hope Americans would agree that if they were in that position, that's the view they would take, too. And maybe that poll you cited about the tariffs speaks to that.

Ezra Klein: Well, this feels to me like a place where Donald Trump has in profound ways underestimated or misapprehended the psychology of other people and other places, which is the core of the Trump administration's case is transactional. America is bigger. We should get more. Bob Lighthizer, the former trade representative said to you in a trade negotiation at some point, you say this in the book, that America has 10 times the Canadian economy. He should get his way 10 times as often as you do.

And the thing is that people aren't governed in their souls as transactionally as Trump is. So you might, it would, I think, be easy to imagine a world in which Prime Minister Carney walking away from the trade table with Trump threatening pretty ruinous levels of tariffs on the Canadian economy would be an unpopular move. By simple, he's now the most popular prime minister in Canadian history. Trump very arguably elected Carney in the first place with a sort of threat to Canadian sovereignty because the more conservative party in Canada had been surging before Trump sort of nationalized and united Canada against him.

And I think this is really important because it gets to this question of whether or not Trumpian foreign policy will work, right? Whether or not it does what it says on the tin and gets America more power and more wealth. If you misunderstand the way people will react to you, if you think you're going to get them to accept a better deal and actually what you're going to do is turn them against you in a nontransactional way, like you're going to unite them spiritually against you, well then your foreign policy is going to fail.

Guest: Yeah. Look, I think you are 100% right. And I would even go further. Like I think there is this huge miscalculation when it comes to what will the impact on other countries be. I would say the world's capitulation contributed to this Trump administration thinking it would work because, you know, at the beginning it wasn't only Americans who were trying out appeasement. So did most of the rest of the world. So, it's I'm not going to say understandable, but it is easier to understand why, you know, when Liberation Day, quote unquote, Liberation Day was met with appeasement that, you know, the Trump team said, "Hey, this is working."

Ezra Klein: Describe what you mean by appeasement.

Guest: Well, countries accepting the imposition of unilateral tariffs. Shocking really. And you know the Trump administration officials themselves said as these tariffs were being proposed that they expected that other countries would retaliate and most of the world didn't. The exceptions were China and Canada. That was a mistake. So I agree with your point that beating up on your friends is actually not going to make them give in and do what you want.

But I would add another twist to this, Ezra, which is even if this approach to trade were to quote unquote work and you were to have your partners really give in and accept the approach that is being pushed on them by the United States, it would actually be a bad outcome for the United States.

So go back to that Lighthizer quote to you which I find very telling: America is 10 times your economy; we should get our way 10 times as often. The corollary, the obvious international relations realist way of thinking about that relationship is a world in which America acts that way. If we are 10 times your economy and we are much more than 10 times your military, we are a tremendous threat to you at all times. And a world in which the western superpower is a threat to everybody in its reach—which is everybody—is a world in which all the other countries maybe cut deals with us in the short term, but in the background are banding together to contain our threat in the long term. So in the last couple years, I mean two years, Canada has signed a trade deal with China.

Ezra Klein: Not quite.

Guest: How would you describe it? It's a...

Ezra Klein: Like a trade deal is like a big thing, but Canada did a deal with China. How's that?

Guest: China has begun forging closer trade ties with China and being very public about that.

Ezra Klein: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah,

Guest: Canada instead of becoming the 51st state has begun talking about becoming an associate member of the European Union, which I didn't quite expect that to...

Chrystia Freeland: happen.

Ezra Klein: Really?

Chrystia Freeland: Yes.

Chrystia Freeland: Oh, Canadians very much expected that to happen.

Ezra Klein: Wait, so then tell me tell me more about that. Why? Why have Canadians wanted to be an associate member of the EU rather than our proud 51st?

Chrystia Freeland: Oh my god, Ezra, don't say that. We can't. Canada will not be the 51st state. Let me just be really clear. And we don't—I know you didn't mean it this way, but we do not treat it as a joke. On the EU: this is something that in a joking, not joking way we started to talk about in the first Trump administration because just a couple of weeks before President Trump was elected for the first time, Canada concluded our free trade agreement with the EU. I was the lead negotiator. And what is not widely appreciated is that deal is actually on paper a much deeper trade agreement than the USMCA because it includes government procurement. So Canada and the EU open up government procurement to each other. So we had that foundation and then when Trump was elected for the first time and for the first time started beating us up with tariffs, we had become friends with the negotiation of CETA, our trade deal with Europe. And we talked in a kind of joking, not joking way pretty regularly with the EU about how if NAFTA fell apart, if our trade deal with the United States didn't work, would the Europeans let us be members? And it even got to a point where Cecilia Malmström, she is a wonderful Swedish liberal, was the EU trade commissioner. She was dealing with the US. I was too. We would text each other and talk to each other and we developed this shorthand where if you said "I am in Mordor" that meant "I'm in Washington." Cecilia once sent me a text saying "Gandalf is going to Mordor next week." Obvious to me what that meant: Angela Merkel going to Washington. In the shorthand, the elves were the Europeans. Hobbits were Canadian. I didn't mind that. I'm very small. I don't have huge feet, but in other respects, I'm not dissimilar to a hobbit. Grew up on a farm and stuff. And of course, I think you know who Sauron was.

Ezra Klein: And so, were you constantly going back and forth from the Shire then?

Chrystia Freeland: Yes. Oh, definitely. I would say like safely back in the Shire for sure. And by the way, I felt that way. I felt like that relief.

Ezra Klein: That's the other side of that deal making strategy that you force people to begin treating you as a threat, which means figuring out how to create defenses against you and in the long run. This is classic IR theory, figuring out how to weaken and undermine you.

Chrystia Freeland: 100% correct. I mean, I think that the Trump administration is unintentionally revealing the genius of the post-war American establishment. And you know, it's actually remarkable what they did. They created an alliance based on the idea that they would be better off if their allies were stronger and more prosperous. They actually invested in the post-war reconstruction of Germany and Japan. You know, America was in this position of unmatched dominance after the Second World War. And it decided to build an alliance. And you know, from the position of a country that was not America, very easy to complain about that alliance. And by the way, when you guys are not in the room, we always have, right? And these were never truly equal partnerships. America was always first among equals. But America did actually listen to its allies. America was governed by this general idea that this is a win-win partnership that we will get rich together that the prosperity of one country within the group of allies far from being a threat is actually going to help us and that we have an interest in each other's security. And like, wow, such a great idea and a great idea for America. That is what made America different from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union certainly did not have partners. It only had vassals. Same with China. That's how America was a distinctive superpower. And when Tim Snyder talks about superpower suicide, what he means is America voluntarily wrecking that. And I think you're totally right. Like part of why this incredibly ill-conceived approach seems to have been pursued is no one thought about the next step. No one thought about okay if we do that what are our counterparties going to do and the counterparties are doing two things.

Chrystia Freeland: Um, one is try to become as not dependent on America as possible. Disentangle those ties as much as they can, particularly in the military space, but also economically. And that's bad for America materially. You know, countries are going to think really hard before they buy another F-35 controlled by the Pentagon. Why would you want a jet that Americans control?

Ezra Klein: Europe and Canada are obsessed with having an alternative to Starlink.

Chrystia Freeland: And so is Ukraine and rightly so, you know.

Chrystia Freeland: So become less dependent. So American companies get less money, they have fewer clients, but then also America has less leverage. And the part about all of this that I find so it's not just depressing but horrifying is the biggest winner is China because as with that poll that you cited at the beginning of our conversation Ezra, we are now in a world where citizens of democracies of countries that have been US allies for generations now believe the United States is a greater threat than China. And this is Xi's China. This is a China which is more authoritarian than it has been in decades. So I find sort of a world where every country that is not the United States or China is engaged in a balancing act between these two predatory hegemons to be a really bad world.

Ezra Klein: And just to add some data to that, the Democracy Perception Index put out a survey of 98 countries. The US was the fifth worst perceived country. We were just ahead of Iran, two spots behind Russia. China among these countries was net favorable. One of the—again going back to the question of even instrumentally, even from the Trump administration's promises and perspective, is this working? To the extent the Trump administration had a coherent theory of the case, it has always been about American competition with China: American competition for power, American competition for manufacturing capacity, American competition for geopolitical influence, American competition at some level for hearts and minds.

Chrystia Freeland: Even now for technology and AI.

Ezra Klein: For technology and AI, Trump has acted like a Manchurian agent. I mean, he has put China in incredibly strong position compared to where it was even a couple of years ago. And one way in which he has done that is what countries want above all from counterparties is predictability and reliability. China has a lot of problems. America has become the unreliable boyfriend.

Ezra Klein: Unreliable boyfriend. What they are is fairly predictable and reliable.

Chrystia Freeland: You wouldn't say that's true in deals people make with them.

Ezra Klein: So, look, I think that I totally agree with your observation that there has not been a president who has been more beneficial for China than Donald Trump.

Ezra Klein: Astonishing, astonishing how this has helped China. The Economist had a great cover. It said, you know, don't interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake. And I think that's like the Chinese—

Chrystia Freeland: Yeah. What is it? Wasn't it Xi looking at Trump?

Chrystia Freeland: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and I think that is 100% correct. The only thing that I would take issue with a little bit is I would say let's not fall for the Chinese propaganda, right? The Chinese line is okay, you might not like us. You might think it's bad that we oppress Uyghurs and Tibetans and that we crushed liberties in Hong Kong, but don't pay attention to that. Like, don't be like a namby-pamby liberal. You can trust us as an international player because we play by the rules. We are not a power that seeks to expand. We're not a power that seeks to dominate. We actually believe in the rules-based international order. So, kind of, you know, we might—I might be beating up my wife and kids at home, but you know, when I'm outside in the world, I'm a trustworthy partner and—

Speaker A: ...a partner who, and this is critical in what China is saying right now, a partner who is supportive of the rules-based international order and multilateralism. And I don't think that's quite true. And where I think it's not true is first of all in trade, China broke the global trading system through intentional overcapacity and through intentional and pretty vicious building of supply chain dominance. And that's one of the things that got Trump elected. Not the only thing, but one of the things. And that's an area where I think he has a point. And then the second thing is I think we should be careful about believing the Chinese assertions that, you know, they don't want to change us, that they want the world just to have rules-based multilateralism. China definitely wants to change Taiwan, and China passed a law that gives it extraterritorial authority as deemed by itself over political forces outside China that China deems to be acting against China's ethnic unity. And the final thing I would say is China has been pretty Stephen Milleresque: the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must in its foreign policy.

Speaker B: The iron law of power.

Speaker A: Right. Exactly. The only difference is China has done it effectively.

Speaker A: So when Norway granted a Nobel Prize to a Chinese writer, okay, like that's not something the Norwegian government is the boss of. But China punished Norway, and China punished Norway by banning salmon exports, and Norway had to grovel and kowtow to get them reinstated. When Lithuania wanted to have a relationship with Taiwan, China imposed economic punishment on Lithuania. When Canada honored our extradition treaty with the United States and arrested—under pretty nice house arrest in a $5 million Vancouver mansion—the CFO of Huawei, two Canadians were illegally arrested and detained in conditions that experts said amounted to torture. So, China is very good at imposing dominance and vassalage on countries that it thinks ought to obey.

Speaker B: It's funny. I don't think I agree with you. I don't think we're saying something different, but I realize where the difference is when you were saying that. I don't think the rules-based international order is a concept that still has meaning. And so, when—

Speaker A: Maybe it has meaning, but it doesn't exist.

Speaker B: Yes. I understand linguistically what you are gesturing towards.

Speaker A: Yeah. No, like it could exist. You know what I mean? It's not...

Speaker B: But the point I'm making about this is that I think that a lot of the conversation is caught on this nostalgia for a thing that arguably has not existed for a while and definitely does not exist now. And that what China is pointing the way towards when I say China is reliable—I don't mean they are reliable as a multilateral partner who upholds a fair and neutral rules-based order. They're obviously not reliable at that.

Speaker A: But that's how they pitch themselves.

Speaker B: I agree that's how they pitch themselves. I think that they are broadly speaking a predictable counterparty in quite often very unequal relationships. Whereas Trump is an erratic counterpart,

Speaker A: A predictable predatory hegemon.

Speaker B: So if you're Taiwan, you know what China wants from you. And to some degree, if you're Norway, you know what China wants from you. You know what their red lines are going to be, right? This is a bad system to move towards. This system is a regression towards older forms of geopolitics that we moved past through a lot of blood. But this is the tragedy.

Speaker A: Yeah, fully agree. And I think another way of putting it might be China is what an effective Trump administration would seek to become.

Speaker B: That's interesting,

Speaker A: Right? Like a predatory hegemon, but that's good at it. And I would include that's good at mercantilism—

Speaker B: And that is good at running a rent-seeking kleptocratic state. So yeah, China—I agree with you. China is good at being a 19th-century-style totally immoral self—

Speaker A: Dealing interested elite at the top superpower and if you know—

Speaker B: A totally self-interested entity. I don't even think you have to say totally immoral. Some things they do are immoral, some things are amoral, but they are extremely transactional in pursuit of their own power. It's why I think you're right when you say in some ways they are what Trump only promises to be.

Speaker A: But I think there is some actual immorality there too. It's the difference between abusing your workers just to make money and wiping out the Uyghurs and the Tibetans because you believe there should be one Han people. Do you see what I mean? Like the objective—

Speaker B: Yeah. I don't want to be here defending Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs. That's not—

Speaker A: What I'm saying is—yeah, I know it's not, but the abuse—what I guess what I'm trying to say here, which I think is an important distinction, is it's not just a ruthless pursuit of economic efficiency.

Speaker B: There's power, and I think this is not a new thing. A long-standing view of particularly large regimes is power comes from enforced social solidarity, which can often mean the extinguishing of difference.

Speaker A: Yes, correct.

Speaker B: That is a scary thing. Right. I do not want to live in a world ruled by China. I don't want to live under Chinese rule. This world where you're caught between China and America is a tough world for everybody who's not China and America and possibly a tough world for America, too.

Speaker A: I 100% agree. And the only sort of stipulation I would add is this world where you're caught between China and a predatory America,

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: An America, a Trump America. It's a terrible world. I think that in that world, America is less rich. It does less well economically. And I think America is less free. You know, the danger for America is that it shifts from being, you know, broadly—I don't want to romanticize pre-Trump America, but broadly a rules-based market economy to a kleptocracy where rent-seeking is the way that businesses prosper. And you know, history is replete with examples of how when you flip to rent-seeking, it can be good for the individual rent seekers, but it is always terrible for the country as a whole. So I think it's a bad option for America, and it's a really bad option for the world's democracies.

I'll give you an example of the benefits of a benign America that I came across just this week. I was talking with a Brazilian about the Brazilian elections, and this is a progressive, someone who is very much anti-Bolsonaro. And this person said, "You know, the problem is even if a miracle happens and Bolsonaro doesn't win—and by the way, this person is predicting Bolsonaro will win fair and square—but the person said even if a miracle happens and Bolsonaro doesn't win, there's the real risk that the vote will not be fairly counted." And then what this person said is it would be different with a different US administration, because in the past, something that helped guarantee fair election counting was a US administration, and we don't have that now. And I think that kind of impact at the margins is something that the world's democracies will really lose.

And again, this is one of the reasons I wrote my book, and kind of one of my big conclusions is the battleground for liberal democracy in the world is America. And if liberal democracy loses here, it's going to be in tough shape in the rest of the world. In the first term, if you looked at people like Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, a lot of people at the top of the economy, they were very opposed to what Trump seemed to mean for how to do business in America, right? They didn't like what he meant for democracy. They didn't like what he meant for our openness to immigrants. They didn't like what he meant for our values. But they also didn't like this idea that you would have this transactional pay-to-play system, and they were not in his coalition. In the second term, to varying degrees, many of them have been, you know, going all the way up to Elon Musk who just dumped $250 million or...

Ezra: ...something to try to save Republicans in the midterms. And it has a kind of antecedent in your book from your time in Moscow, post Soviet Union's crackup watching the sort of oligarchs take over. And so I'd be curious how this has looked to you, played out to you, because in some other world it's American business executives who are very, very strong in talking Trump down from the tariffs, but I don't think they've been as strong as they would have been in the first term.

Guest: Um, yeah, I totally agree with you, Ezra, and it's really frightening to me actually because of what I saw in Russia. I don't want to stretch it too far, right? Like, you know, Russia tried to become a democracy in the '90s, but never fully got there. America [clears throat] is arguably the world's strongest democracy.

Ezra: Arguably.

Guest: Arguably, arguably. And you know, Russia never fully built a really freely functioning market economy. So many, many differences, but parallels too. And you know what I saw in Russia in the '90s was the men who became oligarchs were broadly like really smart guys, innovative, entrepreneurial, you know, PhDs in math and physics.

Ezra: [snorts]

Guest: Um in a different environment. They might have become like a Silicon Valley founder, but they were smart enough to figure out the best way to get super rich is to get the government to give you an oil company. It is a way to get very rich very fast. But then as they sort of realized this, they decided that they could control the state. And it started with Yeltsin. But then as Yeltsin was fading, they needed to put someone else in his place. And it was actually the oligarchs or at least one of the oligarchs who put Putin in place. And the thinking was he will be our guy and ultimately we will manipulate him. We're so much smarter than this guy. He's like a primitive KGB agent. We're like brilliant business entrepreneur guys. But of course he got the last laugh and once he was firmly installed in power he showed them who was boss and that was him. That should be a cautionary tale for America's bureaucrats and I think they should be very careful about thinking that they can control President Trump.

Ezra: Do you think they think they can control him? I don't actually think that's what they believe.

Guest: Elon Musk.

Ezra: I don't think he thinks he can control him.

Guest: Really?

Ezra: Yeah.

Guest: Do you think he ever did?

Ezra: I don't know. Trump didn't come from where Putin did. Right. Trump was already president when they began had already been president once when they began moving towards him. Trump had developed particularly around the assassination attempt which is when Musk endorses him this somewhat force of history great men of history the these same people were very angry at the Biden administration. It had snubbed them. It had taxed them. It had regulated them. It had investigated them. It had spoken unkindly of them. It had moderated them. It had done all these things at their

Guest: trustbusted them.

Ezra: Tresbusted them. So, in some cases, actually, for a lot of them, it hadn't actually, but we can put that to the side. Um, their level of fury often seemed to me quite outsized to whatever regulatory tax they're willing to pay. It's not like Biden actually did break up Facebook or something. Anyway, what I think they saw in Trump, though, wasn't somebody they can control so much as somebody they could do business with. I think they know they're not in control of him. But particularly now that he won, they take this system as it is. And this is the real danger of a system mutating into what our political system is mutating into. And the tariffs are part of this. Tariffs are among other things a tool of corruption. is that this is actually the way to prosper and attain power in the system that that in a world where the Trump administration will go after its enemies and give favorable decisions on mergers and other things to its friends that I think many of them convince themselves this is just how you do business. You're not doing anything wrong. it is what it is that it becomes a some of them are true believers. Musk has a very extreme form of politics. I don't think they're all true believers, but the thing that is very frightening about capitulation at the level we've seen and the kind of kleptocratic structure I think Trump is trying to build both uh explicitly and intuitively is that there becomes a competitive logic to further capitulation. Right? If you

Guest: it's it's the opposite of the virtue virtuous cycle of collective action. You're anthropic and Dario Amade. You try to put limits on what you know your system will do through the Pentagon and all of a sudden you're being potentially declared a supply chain risk and frozen out of all government contracts, right? Conversely, you're one of the other companies and you say, "We'll do what you want, Mr. President, and you get all the contracts." It changes the entire incentive structure in a way that creates this like feedback loop between power and capitulation. But what I also believe has happened, and this maybe came first, you know, the reason that you saw some big business interests get behind Trump before he was reelected [snorts] is a sense or maybe sense is too weak a word, an observation [snorts] that populist rage was rising in America, that there were a lot of people who felt left out and an anxiety that that rage could be pretty bad for the 0.1%. And from that comes the view, okay, here's a guy who can harness that rage. Here's a guy who can be the hero of people who are really unhappy with how things are going right now. And the good news is he is not going to be a trustbuster. He's not going to break up our companies. He is not going to raise our taxes. He's going to find a different direction in which to channel that anger.

Ezra: Here's the only amendment I would make to this. I don't think that what the business titans were describing here feared was populism in the country. I don't think they were worried about laid-off steel workers in Ohio. I don't think that's the kind of rage or power that they feared. I've talked to many of these people. I've heard many of them talk to each other. One of the wonderful things about the podcasting economy is you can listen to billionaires talk to each other and see them talk to each other on Twitter and elsewhere. X and what they hated like say in Silicon Valley was the way New York Times covered tech. What they hated was their employees organizing on Slack demanding they put out Black Lives Matter statements to say nothing of unionizing or you know other more um threatening things to to the business. And when I think of like what they were trying to bring to heal and many of them have talked about this very explicitly you know Mark Andre has talked about this when he did an interview with my former colleague Ross Douet is what they were trying to bring to heal what they were trying to stop was this effort by like another part of society with actual power centers to not just regulate them not just tax them but to diminish their social status to say that what they did was bad and it should change and they did not have the pull or the power that they currently have. But I don't think they were worried about populism as like normally understood. I think they were worried about progressivism that was coming from other kinds of power centers in society.

Guest: Um I sort of agree but with a plus plus. So I think that there are kind of two parts to kind of the hurt feelings of the super rich. I think one part is exactly what you talk about. It's that [snorts] it's not quite status anxiety as it is what what is your social position? Um are you do you have the main character energy in the society?

Ezra: Should you be lauded and praised? Right.

Guest: Should the garlands of flowers be thrown at your feet for like like are you the heroes cuz like you know there was um certainly in kind of Reagan then Clinton then you know techno optimism there was this moment of like yay entrepreneurs inventors the heroes and I think there is kind of understandably like everyone wants to be considered good by their society. [snorts] um a resentment at not being considered good. But I would not overlook Ezra the

Chrystia Freeland: The power of material self-interest and the anxiety being—sure, like a New York Times columnist might write something mean about me, but where that becomes really offensive, sufficient to politically organize, is all of those mean columns end up electing a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren who is going to tax us, regulate us, and break up our companies.

Ezra Klein: Or they potentiate into a Biden administration that has Lina Khan.

Chrystia Freeland: Right?

Ezra Klein: That is actually trying to tax them.

Chrystia Freeland: Yeah. Like it's not just hurt feelings—it's partly hurt feelings, but it is also "my economic interest is going to be hit." And I'm going to put to you a thesis or a possibility, which is the tide may be turning. I've actually just written a piece for the FT making this argument that I think we're reaching a tipping point, and that you're going to see a lot less capitulation. Because I think there are a lot of people who decided appeasement was the right thing to do. And I think a lot of them are deciding, first of all, it actually has just encouraged the president to be even more unhinged.

But second of all, I think they think maybe he's going to lose. And if the tide does end up turning, I'm going to say the moment that it started to turn was the Wall Street Journal piece that Jamie Dimon published on the 28th of September. So, just a few weeks ago—I don't know if you saw this—where he called for a massive US-EU trade and economic deal. And he even described it as a "big, beautiful agreement" and said, "This is what America should be doing." I see that as really significant because the piece that Jamie wrote contains no direct criticism of the Trump administration, but its actual content is 180 degrees different from the policies the Trump administration is pursuing.

And there is also, I think, a really big group of CEOs who actually think global trade, particularly with value-sharing partners, is a good idea; who believe in the transatlantic alliance; who think Ukraine should win the war with Russia; who think it is nuts to be having a trade war with Canada. I think there are a lot of business leaders like that. Certainly, I talk to a lot of them. Now, I'm Canadian and also support Ukraine, so maybe I know more people like that, but you know, I talked to a lot of people like that. Many of whom actually donated to the Trump election campaign, who are profoundly disappointed right now and even kind of scared by what they see happening.

They're scared by the war in Iran. They are scared by Trump actually siding with Putin rather than Ukraine. They're scared by trade wars that seem about a sort of fight for dominance that Americans don't want. Like Americans don't actually want Canada to be the 51st state. They do not want to crush Canada or your enemy. So, I think that it will depend on the midterms, because I think what we've seen from American business is they're going to be on the side of power. But I think that if they see that President Trump and MAGA no longer deliver at the ballot box, you may start seeing some very different behavior.

Ezra Klein: I think that might be right. I mean, so there's this idea of preference cascades, which are situations where a lot of people hold a preference that they don't yet feel comfortable voicing. And so something changes and then everything spills out because there's been pressure building up behind a wall.

So many people will make the argument that there was a preference cascade towards Trump in 2024. That many in the American business community and in the American sort of cultural elite and so on had actually become very, at the very least, against the Democrats, right? They hated wokeness. They hated Joe Biden. They hated Lina Khan. They hated, you know, the whole kind of situation. But supporting Trump had been culturally looked down upon. Maybe you wouldn't get invited back to your galas.

Chrystia Freeland: Well, you might get invited, but people would think like...

Ezra Klein: Think you're a jerk.

Chrystia Freeland: Yeah. Yeah.

Ezra Klein: So people were sort of holding back. And it was once Musk did his endorsement and Andreessen kind of get and then things began, all these people who had actually been quietly pro-Trump, at least somewhat, there was this rush towards it. And then in the Trump era, because there is a real punishment for getting on Trump's bad side, lots of people at different levels of society, but particularly in the business community here, who actually can't stand this. They have the opinions they had in the first term. They think this is grotesque, but they're mostly quiet because it's a risk.

Even something like the Jamie Dimon op-ed you're describing. Yes, if you know how to read trade debates, Dimon is disagreeing with Donald Trump, but as you say, it doesn't come out with a critique of Donald Trump.

Chrystia Freeland: But it's a disagreement at a profound level, right?

Ezra Klein: Sure. But the thing that will tell me the dam has burst is when people say the thing that is true and say, "This guy is insanely corrupt and he is harming America's interests. And this is a grotesque way of using the Oval Office and it is against what we stand for both as a country and as citizens," right? I agree. I'm glad Jamie Dimon is standing up for decent trade policy, but I see that as a fairly low bar to clear.

Chrystia Freeland: So look, yeah, agreed. And I would also just kind of going back to these preference cascades, I think part of what was pent up was very well expressed in a great piece that the FT ran right after Trump's re-election where they quoted an anonymous top banker saying, "We can now say [it] again. It's great."

Ezra Klein: Yeah, congratulations, guy. I mean...

Chrystia Freeland: Also that they quoted him anonymously is so...

Ezra Klein: Some of these people...

Chrystia Freeland: And it's so revealing that like, wow, we were so oppressed. We weren't allowed to call people [slurs]. Terrible. The oppression that we suffered under Democrats.

But I think there clearly was that. And I guess I do think that there is now pent up among very privileged people a pent-up appreciation that the policies of this administration are bad for America. They are bad for the country as a whole. They are bad for the country economically. They are bad for the country in terms of security. And business leaders are starting to see that—even people who describe themselves as very conservative, who are quite sympathetic with some of the stated objectives. But I don't think they ever were supportive of America turning into a kleptocracy that was Putin's best friend, that was seeking for Ukraine to lose the war, and that was breaking up the NATO alliance. And that's what's happening.

Ezra Klein: So I want to bring this back to the US and Canada. If before January 1st there is a deal, what do you think that deal will look like? What do you think are the core issues that actually could be resolved such that both sides would say that's good enough, we can step back from this?

Chrystia Freeland: So the first thing I would say is there doesn't have to be a deal before January 1st. There just has to be getting into a negotiation and sort of saying we're going to have a ceasefire on further tariffs while the negotiation happens. And I think that would be a good place to be in terms of where negotiation goes.

What I think would definitely be the outlines of a plausible deal—and this is not just a deal with Canada actually, I think this could be a deal with the allies writ large, so including the EU and the UK—is America to say, actually we want to be your friends. We want to be your trading partners. We actually recognize that trade between us is mutually beneficial. It makes us richer. It makes us safer. But we're concerned about China. And so what we would like to do is to have a common policy on China.

I think—and by common I don't mean, you know, exactly matched tariff policy, but a common approach that has real teeth. Like I think it's important not to frame it as anything punitive towards China, but to create a space where our economies can flourish as well, and where we do not have a dangerous dependence on China. That to me would be the basic logic of the kind of deal that...

Chrystia Freeland: ...you could have. What I would love to see happen, I'd love to see two things happen. The first is the rest of the democratic world should join Canada in retaliating against US tariffs. You know, it's great to have declarations of solidarity and say we're all friends, but what should really happen right now is a kind of more in sorrow than in anger united response from the allies who say this is not acceptable to us. And we're happy to have negotiations. If there are elements of the trade relationship that you want us to work on, we're happy to do it. But we are not going to accept unilateral tariffs. And actually, we're going to match them dollar for dollar. And if you had Canada, Mexico, the EU, I'll throw in Japan, South Korea, Australia, just for fun, basically America's democratic partners all respond together, I think you would see real meaningful pressure on the United States in the right direction. So, I would love to see Canada not standing alone.

Chrystia Freeland: The second thing I would love, and this did happen in the first Trump administration, is Americans said to the White House, "This is nuts. You have to stop doing this." You need to see American business speaking up a lot more. I would say starting with the auto industry. That's where we build things together. I think the midterm results will be really, really important. You know, I would say Senator Grassley was someone who really had guts last time round and said to the president, "You have to stop this. This is not a good idea. There need to be more Republicans who say that." And you know that poll that you cited showing that Americans support Canada's counter-tariffs but don't support American tariffs against Canada. What that says to me is that would be a popular position.

Ezra Klein: I think that is a good place to end. Always a final question. What are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

Chrystia Freeland: Okay, so my books are there are two golden oldies which I reread often, but they're almost like characters in my life. One is The Dispossessed by Ursula K. [Le Guin]. Do you know it?

Ezra Klein: Mhm.

Chrystia Freeland: So, I love this book and it speaks so much to our time actually, when you think about both the dystopian universe that it describes, but also the hope for a small hearty band of people standing for their values. So, I love that book. The second one is The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks.

Ezra Klein: You're a sci-fi head.

Chrystia Freeland: Oh, I totally am. I always have been. I've read sci-fi like since I started to read. And, you know, I think that is darker, but also has light and hope. And I recommend both of those books because I do think, you know, we haven't talked that much about AI, but the combination of AI and a geopolitical order which is all smashed up, and people having questions partly because of the economy, partly because the geopolitical order, partly because of AI about like what it means to be human. I think that reading sci-fi is a really good way to sort of explore those issues. So anyway, those are two great books I highly recommend. And then my third pick is Book of Lives, a memoir of sorts by Margaret Atwood and it's really wonderful. She's obviously a brilliant writer.

Chrystia Freeland: The book kind of reveals her to be a just amazing person who doesn't take herself too seriously, who is able to laugh at her own weaknesses and failings, who is not self-indulgent. And since Ezra, we've been talking about how like suddenly people are kind of interested in Canada, her life is a really Canadian story and reading her account of parts of her life tells you a lot about Canada.

Ezra Klein: Chrystia Freeland, thank you very much.

Chrystia Freeland: It has been wonderful.