Chrystia Freeland spent years negotiating with Donald Trump's administration. Now she's written a book about dealing with the United States, and the title isn't flattering.
Unreliable Boyfriend comes out on Tuesday, Oct. 13.
"I'm thrilled to share that my new book, Unreliable Boyfriend, will be out on October 13," the former deputy prime minister posted on X on Thursday. "I can't wait for you to read it."
In a video announcing it, Freeland called the book "an insider's account of dealing with a chaotic superpower."
"It tells the story of how this U.S. administration is breaking apart the Western alliance," she said, "and it talks about how we can rebuild the Western alliance to be better and stronger than ever."
Where the title comes from
The title comes from Freeland's appearance on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher in February.
She was talking about Canada selling more of its oil to countries other than the U.S., pointing to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which opened in 2024 and carries oil to the Pacific coast. The U.S., she said, is "not a very reliable boyfriend right now."
Four months later, Simon & Schuster announced it as the name of her book.
The full title is Unreliable Boyfriend: An Insider's View of Dealing with a Chaotic Superpower, Plutocrats, and Other Complicated People.
What's in it
The 416-page book is "part memoir, part polemic," according to Simon & Schuster.
Freeland draws on negotiations and meetings in Washington, Brussels, Berlin and Beijing to show how alliances are made and how they fall apart. The book also looks at the growing power of the very rich, and what happens when governments fail to deliver for working people.
Her central argument: trade, security and democracy can no longer be treated as separate issues.
"This is a book about power, democracy, and the choices countries make when the old rules no longer seem to apply," Freeland said when the book was announced in June.
"I've been hoping for ten years that Chrystia Freeland would write this book, because it's a story only she could tell," said her editor, Simon & Schuster's Jonathan Karp.
The book isn't out yet, so it's not known whether it reveals new details about her private negotiations.
'We don't like their representative very much'
Few Canadians have more experience dealing with Trump.
As foreign affairs minister, Freeland led Canada's side in renegotiating NAFTA during his first term. The talks were tense. In September 2018, days before a deal was reached, Trump said of Canada: "We don't like their representative very much."
The new agreement, known in Canada as CUSMA, took effect on July 1, 2020. It still governs trade between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
Canada and the U.S. are fighting again
The book lands in one of the tensest stretches between the two countries in years.
On Sept. 30, Trump said Canada is being "taught a little lesson," as new U.S. bans on some Canadian alcohol, dairy-related products and vehicles took effect at the border. Read that story here.
An AP-NORC poll taken Sept. 24 to 28 found just 26 per cent of Americans now call Canada a close ally. That's down from 45 per cent in March 2025, and 62 per cent in 2023. Most Americans still see Canada as friendly, just not as close.
Canadians are staying away
Canadians made 23.1 million visits to the U.S. in 2025, according to Statistics Canada, down 23.5 per cent from the year before. They spent $3.3 billion less there. Leisure trips took the biggest hit, with 3.2 million fewer.
The drop is big enough that some U.S. cities are pleading for Canadians to come back. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey recently posted a video telling Canadians, "We miss you. We don't think of you as the 51st state." Read that story here.
From journalist to cabinet
Before politics, Freeland was a journalist. She studied at Harvard, then at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and worked as a correspondent and editor at the Financial Times, Reuters and the Globe and Mail. Much of her reporting covered Russia's oligarchs and the link between wealth and political power.
Her first book, Sale of the Century, was about Russia's turn to capitalism. Her second, Plutocrats, about the rise of the global super-rich, won the National Business Book Award in 2013. Justin Trudeau reportedly met her for the first time at a signing for that book, and later recruited her to run for the Liberals.
She won a Toronto byelection in 2013, and served in cabinet from 2015 to 2025, as minister of international trade, foreign affairs, finance, and internal trade. In 2020, she became Canada's first female finance minister.
In December 2024, she quit as finance minister after a dispute with Trudeau over the government's economic direction. Trudeau announced his resignation the next month. Freeland ran for the Liberal leadership in 2025, lost to Mark Carney, and then joined his cabinet.
Back to Oxford
Freeland left cabinet in 2025, and her resignation from Parliament took effect on Jan. 9, 2026. She's now an unpaid economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
On July 1, she became Warden of Rhodes House and CEO of the Rhodes Trust in Oxford, which runs the same scholarship that first took her there.
When it comes out
Unreliable Boyfriend comes out Tuesday, Oct. 13, from Simon & Schuster, in hardcover, ebook and audiobook. The Canadian hardcover has a suggested price of $42.
Sources
Chrystia Freeland, post on X, October 8, 2026
Unreliable Boyfriend, Simon & Schuster Canada
Simon & Schuster announces Chrystia Freeland's new book, Simon & Schuster, June 10, 2026
Statistics Canada, Canadian-resident travel to the United States: A year in review
AP-NORC poll as reported by The Associated Press.
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