Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s former finance minister, excoriated Trump’s tariffs in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today, blasting them in part as “so unjustified and so pointless.”
“These tariffs are being imposed truly for utterly no reason,” Freeland said. “The pretext offered is the flimsiest pretext possible.”
The White House has said it slapped a 25% tariff on Canadian goods to pressure the country into blunting the flow of fentanyl and immigrants into the U.S.
Freeland pushed back on that premise, saying that less than 1% of the fentanyl that comes into the U.S. moves across the northern border.
In fact, according to the White House’s fact sheet on tariffs, 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the northern border last fiscal year. In contrast, more than 21,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the southern border with Mexico during the same period, according to the administration.
“If border security were the issue, this could be solved in five minutes,” said Freeland, a member of Canadian Parliament who served as the country’s finance minister from August 2020 through December 2024.
Freeland, who is running to succeed outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said Canadians were rallying against the Trump administration’s tariffs program. In response to the president’s repeated comments that Canada should become the 51st state, she said “our sovereignty is not negotiable.”
“If you hit us, we are going to hit back, and the whole country is going to be proud to do that,” she said.