Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland delivered a remarkable address in the House of Commons. At times, it almost sounded like she was bidding farewell to a retiring superpower, even as she held out hope that the superpower would agree to stay on a while longer. She never mentioned Trump by name. But the speech was a forceful rebuttal to Trump’s view of how the world should work.

Many American voters in last year’s presidential election were “animated in part by a desire to shrug off the burden of world leadership,” Freeland told Canadian lawmakers. “To say this is not controversial: it is simply a fact.”

While Canada is “grateful” to its neighbor “for the outsized role it has played in the world” and will try to convince the United States that remaining in that role is in the interest of America and the “free world,” this “is ultimately not our decision to make,” she noted. “It is a choice Americans must make for themselves.” (While Freeland may have intended to signal respect for American sovereignty, this line also carried a faint whiff of condescension—recalling the paternalistic way American leaders have long addressed other nations. Just last month, Trump told Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia that they faced “a choice between two futures”—one plagued by terrorism and one free of such violence—“and it is a choice America CANNOT make for you.”)

“Our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership,” Freeland observed. “International relationships that had seemed immutable for 70 years are being called into question.”
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It’s now clear that the “rest of us” need to “set our own clear and sovereign course,” Freeland argued, alluding to the ways in which Trump’s nationalism and protectionism were steering the United States in a different direction. That course, she said, will involve working with Western allies and emerging powers elsewhere in the world to uphold the postwar international order. Canada, which currently depends on the U.S. for much of its trade, will seek to “diversify [its] trade worldwide,” since trading shouldn’t be considered a “zero-sum game.” The Canadian government will draw closer to European partners through free-trade agreements and NATO deployments in Eastern Europe. And it will strengthen its military so that Canada won’t be left as an American “client state.”