At Brown, Trudeau says Trump’s trade war has ‘no logical point,’ is hurting US and Canada
Trudeau, who served as Canada’s prime minister from 2015 to 2025, delivered Brown’s 106th Stephen A. Ogden Jr. ’60 Memorial Lecture on International Affairs to an audience of about 2,100 people.
He spoke as Canada has struck back with tariffs on about $20 billion worth of US goods, in response to the Trump administration’s round of tariffs on Canada. The dispute has resulted a sharp decline in Canadian visitors to Boston and other New England destinations. And Trump has even renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America,” a change ignored and ridiculed in Canada.
In the past, Canada and the United States have experienced “trade tensions,” but this is something entirely different, Trudeau said.
“There is a pattern here of driving up prices for consumers and not necessarily making things better for Americans by fighting with one of your oldest and best allies,” he said.
For example, Trudeau said Canada has for decades been one of the world’s leading suppliers of aluminum. But he said Trump has slapped tariffs on Canadian aluminum, causing prices to rise in the United States.
“Your price of beer goes up because you don’t have enough aluminum in the United States — you have to import it in order to provide all the aluminum you need in defense, military, bars,” he said.
The United States has turned to Bahrain as a source of aluminum, but the Middle East is a lot farther away than Canada, Trudeau said. Also, Bahrain “is not exactly in the most logistically sound area of the world right now because of another thing that Donald Trump did,” he said, referring to the war with Iran.
“The US administration is no longer working in the best interest of the American people,” Trudeau said. “And that makes it extremely unpredictable and difficult for countries to navigate through, for friends to rely on, but also for businesses to invest.”
Brown University President Christina H. Paxson led Tuesday’s conversation with Trudeau, and she noted that during January’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he said that “80 years of stability and prosperity” since World II are over.
Trudeau said the horrors of the world wars convinced nations to establish institutions and abide by rules, resulting in fewer conflicts and a more stability and prosperity. “Hundreds of millions of people added to the global middle class since the 1950s,” he said.
But now, Trudeau said, “The great powers of the world — China and the United States — have decided that the rules-based order is optional, and there are other large powers like Russia and India who are making it optional a little bit for themselves as well — Russia in very belligerent ways, India in other ways.”
Paxson, a health economist, asked Trudeau about Canada’s universal health care system, saying Canada spends about half of what the US spends on health care per capita yet it has better health outcomes. At the same time, she said, Canada’s system prompts complaints about rationing and waiting times.
Trudeau acknowledge Canada’s system has those problems, but he said, “How does someone who doesn’t have health care coverage in the United States feel about wait times or rationing?”
The difference, he said, is that “Nobody becomes a billionaire through health care in Canada.”
Average life expectancy is 77 years in the United States and 82 years in Canada, he said. “That’s one reason we don’t want to become the 51st state,” he quipped. “I don’t want to lose five years in my life.”
But the two countries can learn from each other on health care, Trudeau said. “What you’re able to do in the United States around cutting-edge research and innovation and health is benefiting the whole world,” he said. “But it does come with a cost that needs to be reflected on.”
Paxson also asked Trudeau about his path to politics, noting he studied literature at McGill University in Montreal.
“For me, politics is about storytelling,” Trudeau said. As prime minister, he was inundated with briefing books and memos. “It’s all nonfiction,” he said. “I study literature because I love a good story. So even when I was in the thick of everything as PM, I was reading about a novel a week.”
Trudeau said he founded a film and TV production company a few weeks ago. “I’m going to be trying to make sure that we’re telling more stories, perhaps more Canadian stories, but Canadian stories that resonate like ‘Heated Rivalry’ did,” he said, referring to a queer hockey romance series.
Trudeau said he wants to tell stories that “challenge people to be open to worlds and people who are totally different than your daily life and experience, because democracies only work when when you’re able to find common ground with someone totally different from you.”
Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him @FitzProv.