Axios recently reported a peculiar manner of communication between American President Donald Trump and Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau, citing an occasion when Trump tore off the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, dated May 1-7, 2017, featuring a picture of Trudeau headlined with “The Anti-Trump” and emailed it to the Canadian Embassy with a signature “Looking good! Hope it’s not true!”
According to reports, the National Security Council clearance process gave a green light to the mail correspondence despite its oddity, believing it was done in “good fun”.
The media reports that, according to the sources involved in the case, the Canadian ambassador did not take the email seriously and had to call the White House in order to confirm that it was not a prank.
However, this was not to be the last time that Donald Trump would use pen-pal diplomacy with his Canadian counterpart, as he reportedly mailed Trudeau a document in December 2017 that illustrated the trade deficit between the two countries at the expense of the US, by measuring only the trade of goods.
This time Trump got a handwritten letter from Trudeau, Axios reports, wishing Trump happy Christmas holidays. The package, however, also included a printed page from the website of the United States Trade Representative’s Office that showed a US trade surplus with Canada when trade of services was included alongside the trade of goods – with a smiley face drawn next to the figure of $12.5 billion, according to reports.
The White House has not commented on the revealed information yet.
The relationship between the US and Canada has seen a gradual decline since Donald Trump's election as US president in 2016. The US introduced 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent on tariffs on aluminium from Canada in March 2018, explained by the need to enhance “national security”. The American measures were almost immediately retaliated against by Canada, through its own introduction of trade tariffs on US goods.
