Justin Trudeau’s announcement on Monday that he would resign was the last card left for the deeply unpopular Canadian prime minister, who has set his party on course to lose the national election.

The political levers he has pulled will give Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party a chance to reinvent itself without him. But it will also leave Canada weakened as it prepares for President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has threatened the country with tariffs that could cripple its economy.

That’s a gamble Mr. Trudeau seems willing to take.

To allow thousands of members of his party to choose his successor, a lengthy process that will involve campaigning, Mr. Trudeau suspended parliament until March 24. A general election is expected to follow.

Holding party leadership elections before general elections is common in countries with parliamentary systems such as Canada. Suspension of parliament to hold such elections is far less common. In doing so, Mr. Trudeau averts the likely collapse of his minority government and gives the Liberals time to choose a leader unencumbered by his poor poll results.

But this means that in two weeks, when Mr. Trump back in the Oval Office, Mr. Trudeau to lead Canada like a cripple, weakening the country’s hand in key negotiations with its closest ally.

“The prime minister’s departure means it will be difficult for him to carry any meaningful mandate in negotiations with the US, and it does not signal any unity within Canada,” said Xavier Delgado, senior program fellow at Canada’s Wilson Center, a foreign policy think tank. policy based in Washington. “It’s not a good time for Canada to be in this situation.”

Opponents of Mr. Trudeau wanted a snap general election, which would allow a new government with a new mandate — likely to be led by Pierre Poilievre, whose Conservative Party has a commanding lead in the polls — as soon as possible to lead Canada’s response to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump has threatened to impose punitive tariffs on Canadian goods that could send the country’s economy into recession and undermine the North American trade pact established over the past several decades. (It would also be harmful to the U.S. economy; the two nations are each other’s largest trading partners.)

The president-elect has persistently proposed that Canada become part of the United States, calling it the “51st state.” He repeated his threatening joke on social media on Monday, following the announcement of Mr. Trudeau: “A lot of people in Canada LOVE being the 51st country,” Mr. Trudeau said. Trump in Truth Social post, promising no tariffs if Canada “merges with US”

Fun first

When Mr. Trudeau became leader of the Liberals, the party was in disarray. In the national elections of 2011, he finished third for the first time in his history. Mr. Trudeau, who took over in 2013, is credited with raising him from the dead and bringing him back into government two years later.

“The Liberal Party, as it is, has been the party of Justin Trudeau for over a decade,” said Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, a think tank. That made it difficult for the party to let him go and hand over control to Mr. Trudeau, Ms. Kurl said.

But finally, on Monday morning, after weeks of pressure from within the party to resign, Mr. Trudeau acknowledged that his time was up.

“I really feel that removing the controversy over my own continued leadership is an opportunity to lower the temperature,” he told reporters gathered in the freezing cold outside his Ottawa residence.

“It became obvious to me with internal struggles that I could not be the one to carry the liberal standard in the next election,” he added. Until the Liberals elect their new leader, Mr. Trudeau said, he will remain in that role as prime minister.

The intra-party election process, which will last several weeks, will make it possible a handful of hopefuls to re-introduce themselves to the public, no longer as Trudeau’s associates, but as individuals competing for the leadership of the party and the country.

“I think the Liberals are now clinging to the idea that there is no way forward for him, but there is absolutely a way forward for someone else,” Ms Kurl said.

However, since the conservatives lead the liberals by 25 percentage points in recent surveys, the path that Mr. Trudeau leaves his successor likely to be sneaky.

“Sixty or 90 days is not a long time to recreate a party after 10 years in power,” Ms Kurl said. “How many more rabbits are there in the hat? How many more pivots are there?”

A brief relief

For many Canadians, Mr. Trudeau’s departure was a necessary condition if they were to consider voting Liberal.

David Coletto, who runs Abacus Data, a polling firm, said early polls on Monday showed Canadians were relieved at the news of Mr. Trudeau, and that his departure has the potential to divert attention from his unpopularity.

“People say they are relieved and optimistic about the prime minister leaving,” he said. “It’s a signal to me that there is a potential opportunity for the Liberals to rebuild a relationship with Canadians.” But it is far from happening, he warned.

While Mr. Trudeau’s departure can only improve the situation for the Liberals, analysts said, the country is unlikely to benefit from being virtually leaderless when Mr. Trump takes office.

As the new president begins to push through his agenda – which has Canada in the spotlight, with Mr. With Trump complaining about border security, Canadian military spending and trade imbalances – Canada will try to determine who is in charge.

“Canada would be strongest in its relationship with the United States if it could unite around a message for its leader — and that would apply to any country,” Mr. Delgado of the Wilson Center Canadian Institute.

Others were less concerned, suggesting that Canada’s dealings with the Trump administration will be a long game.

Gerald Butts, former chief adviser to Mr. Trudeau, who is now a vice president at the consulting firm Eurasia Group, said that no leader would be able to make a deal with Mr. Trump on the first day.

“Nothing irreparably bad will happen in the next three months,” said Mr. Butts. “We will have Trump for four years; the next three months will not be the whole story.”