Dumping the Trudeau Doctrine

The backstory to Chrystia Freeland's "friendshoring" fervour: how to undo the damage done to global democracy without anyone noticing who did it.

It’s not going to be easy to disentangle democratic countries like Canada from the crippling dependencies and greasy relationships governments like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s have long cultivated and expedited with the oligarchs and princelings of the China-Russia axis.

But you have to give Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland credit for the way she’s come right out and admitted that it’s work that has to be done. It’s a matter of global democracy’s survival. Freeland laid it all out in an address to the Brookings Institution in Washington last week. It’s had everyone buzzing for days.

You could say that all that’s really happened is Freeland has adopted U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s notion of a “friendshoring” trading bloc among democracies, a multilateral big-team alternative to unilateral Trump-type “onshoring” or “reshoring” retreats from despot-dominated globalization.

But there’s a lot more going on here. It’s the subject of my column in the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen, in print today: Chrystia Freeland is right to condemn doing business with dictators. Will Trudeau listen?

I just scratched the surface.