Ex-Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is running to replace Trudeau as Canada's prime minister

TORONTO — Chrystia Freeland, whose abrupt resignation as finance minister last month forced Justin Trudeau's exit as prime minister, said she is running to be the next leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister of Canada.

Freeland said Friday in a statement posted on X that she will officially launch her campaign on Sunday.

She also released an opinion piece in which she called for economic retaliation if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump follows through with his threat to impose tariffs on all Canadian products.

''If President Trump imposes 25 per cent tariffs, our counterpunch must be dollar-for-dollar — and it must be precisely and painfully targeted,'' Freeland wrote in the Toronto Star.

''Florida orange growers, Michigan dishwasher manufacturers and Wisconsin dairy farmers: brace yourselves. Canada is America's largest export market — bigger than China, Japan, the U.K., and France combined. If pushed, our response will be the single largest trade blow the U.S. economy has ever endured," she added.

Freeland announced her resignation from Trudeau's Cabinet on Dec. 16, criticizing some of Trudeau's economic priorities in the face of Trump's tariff threats. The move stunned the country and raised questions about how much longer the increasingly unpopular Trudeau could stay in his job.

Trudeau announced on Jan. 6 that he would resigen, though he will remain prime minister until a new Liberal Party leader is chosen on March 9.

The front-runners for the Liberal Party leadership are Freeland and former Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney.

The next Liberal leader could be the shortest-tenured prime minister in the country's history. All three opposition parties have vowed to bring down the Liberals' minority government in a no-confidence vote after parliament resumes on March 24. An election is expected this spring.

Recent polls suggest the Liberals' chances of winning the next election look slim. In the latest poll by Nanos Research, the Liberals trail the opposition Conservatives 47% to 20%.

Trudeau announced his resignation on Jan. 6 after losing support both within his party and in the country.

The political upheaval comes at a difficult moment for Canada. Trump keeps calling Canada the 51st state and has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on all Canadian goods.

Trudeau told Freeland last month he no longer wanted her to serve as finance minister, but that she could remain deputy prime minister and the point person for U.S.-Canada relations.

Freeland resigned shortly after and released a scathing letter about the government that proved to be the last straw for the embattled leader.

''Chrystia has been by my side for close to 10 years now. She has been an incredible political partner through just about everything we have done as a government as a party over the last decade,'' Trudeau said when he announced his resignation.

An official close to Freeland said she resigned because the prime minister had lost confidence in her. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

After she resigned, Trump called Freeland ''totally toxic'' and ''not at all conducive to making deals.'' Freeland was Canada's point person when the U.S, Canada and Mexico redid its free trade deal during the first Trump administration.

Freeland and Trudeau had disagreed about two recently announced policies: a temporary sales tax holiday on goods ranging from children's clothes to beer, and plans to send every citizen a check for $250 Canadian dollars ($174.) Freeland, who was also deputy prime minister, said Canada could not afford ''costly political gimmicks.''

But Freeland herself has been criticized for Canada's growing deficits and she was finance minister when the Liberal government became deeply unpopular with voters over a range of issues, including the soaring cost of food and housing as well as surging immigration.

''Our country is facing a grave challenge,'' Freeland wrote in her resignation letter. ''That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war.''

Freeland is a combination of many things that seem to irritate Trump: a liberal Canadian and a former journalist. Freeland, who is of Ukrainian heritage, has also been a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Freeland has been a frequent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who banned her from traveling to the country in 2014 in retaliation for Western sanctions against Moscow.

The 56-year-old Harvard graduate and Rhodes scholar speaks five languages and has influential friends around the world.

Trudeau personally recruited Freeland to join his Liberal Party while it was the third party in Parliament in 2013. At the time, Freeland had a senior position at the Reuters news agency but was ready to move on after setbacks in her journalism career, Martin Wolf, an influential Financial Times columnist and longtime friend previously said.

Freeland was the Financial Times' former Moscow bureau chief in her mid-20s during the collapse of the Soviet Union. She has served as deputy editor of the Globe and Mail in Toronto and the Financial Times.

She was familiar to many TV viewers in the U.S. because of her regular appearances on talk shows like the one hosted by Fareed Zakaria.