Fmr Biden ambassador blames Trump for Canada playing 'footsie' with China

Former U.S. Ambassador to David L. Cohen is blaming the Trump administration's hardline trade pressure for pushing Ottawa into engaging with China.

"I think Canada has tentatively tried to play some footsie with China that the Trump administration may not be happy with," Cohen, who served as President Joe Bidens ambassador to Canada from 2021 to 2025, said in an interview with Fox News Digital.

"There is a discomfort with that," Cohen says, while arguing that it is ultimately Canada's reflex to sentiment against President Donald Trump – particularly his hardline trade policies and rhetoric about the neighbor to the north being a "51st state."

"One of downsides of the aggressive Trump administration treatment of Canada and many other allies and partners is that the irony is that those policies are pushing those countries to at least consider broader and larger deals with China, which of course is wholly inconsistent with a major thrust of President Trump's international trade policy," Cohen continued. "So, how that shakes out, it's all a matter of degree and balance.

"But I think there's no doubt that the aggressiveness of the Trump administration positions has caused many countries to at least reevaluate whether there are additional deals that can be made with China."

The comments come as U.S.-Canada trade tensions spiral after negotiations collapsed last month. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday accused Washington of seeking dependence rather than partnership.

"The most fundamental issue is that the cumulative U.S. demands revealed that they wanted us to become even more reliant on them, not less," Carney said. "In too many areas, they wanted dependency, not a true economic partnership."

Notably, the fallout comes just weeks before Chinese dictator Xi Jinping makes an historic trip to the White House to talk trade – something that never happened during the Biden administration despite Biden's onetime quip before the COVID-19 pandemic that "China's not bad folks."

Vice President JD Vance, speaking in Maine last month, accused Canada of giving Chinese goods better treatment than products from American northern border states.

"They treat Chinese goods more fairly than they do the goods that come from the people of Maine: Its insanity," Vance said. "And what weve said to Canada is, Stop it."

Cohen, however, was careful not to cast Canada as blameless in the trade feud. He admitted U.S. dairy farmers have legitimate complaints about Canadas tariff-rate quota system, saying the issue has frustrated administrations of both parties for years.

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"This is one of the totally legitimate trade issues that exists between the United States and Canada," Cohen said. "There is contention there that is hurting American dairy farmers. Yes, I will be honest and clear about that."

"That tension existed under Joe Biden. Was he able to solve that problem? No," he added. "It was something that was discussed and discussed more than once. We just never got there."

Cohen, supportive of Trump's "substance" on trade talks but not the "style," did credit Trump for replacing NAFTA with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, calling USMCA a "terrific deal" that improved continental trade.

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