In a preview clip from an interview that will air Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent on aluminum on the European Union, Canada and Mexico were “insulting.”
Trudeau offered the White House claim the decision was made in the interest of “national security” as the reason.
Trudeau said, “The idea that our soldiers who had fought and died together on the beaches of World War II and the mountains of Afghanistan, and have stood shoulder to shoulder in some of the most difficult places in the world, that are always there for each other, somehow—this is insulting to them. The idea that the Canadian steel that’s in military vehicles in the United States, the Canadian aluminum that makes your, your fighter jets is somehow now a threat?”
He continued, “The idea that we are somehow a national security threat to the United States is, quite frankly, insulting and unacceptable.”
When asked what Trump wanted, Trudeau said, “I don’t know… They have a two billion dollars surplus on steel with us. So it’s not like the trade is imbalanced against the U.S.’s favor on this one.”
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