In Canada they call it the Love, Actually effect. Justin Trudeau’s rebuke of Donald Trump won him the type of kudos a fictional British prime minister earned in the 2003 movie for standing up to a US president. Canada will “not be pushed around,” said Mr Trudeau to loud applause. That sentiment is rising on all sides.
In Mexico, which looks set next weekend to elect its most anti-American administration in a generation, it might be dubbed the “Amlo” effect — short for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the country’s likely next president. Mexico’s foreign minister this week called America’s child border camps “cruel and inhumane”. A French spokesperson said the US had different “civilisational values” to the rest of the west. Nobody batted an eyelid.
From Ottawa to Wellington, because of one outrage or another, condemnations of America are becoming routine. Much of it is specific to Mr Trump. When the US withdrew last year from the Paris accord on global warming, Mr Trudeau was careful to criticise the “US federal government”, thus distinguishing America’s widely disliked president from the country he leads. Some of today’s anti-Americanism might go with Mr Trump.