Justin Trudeau made a shock go to to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property to have what he known as an “glorious dialog”, making Canada’s prime minister the primary G7 chief to fulfill with the US president-elect earlier than his second time period.
The assembly got here amid widespread fears in Canada and lots of different components of the world that Trump’s promised commerce coverage of imposing tariffs will trigger widespread financial chaos.
Trudeau and a handful of high advisers flew to Florida amid expectations that Trump will impose a 25% surcharge on Canadian merchandise that might have a devastating influence on Canadian vitality, auto and manufacturing exports.
The assembly over dinner between Trudeau and Trump, their wives, US cupboard nominees and Canadian officers, lasted over three hours and was described by a senior Canadian official to the Toronto Star as a constructive, wide-ranging dialogue.
Leaving a Florida lodge in West Palm Seaside on Saturday, Trudeau stated: “It was a superb dialog.”
The face-to-face assembly got here at Trudeau’s suggestion, in keeping with the Canadian official, and had not been disclosed to the Ottawa press corps, which solely discovered about Trudeau’s journey when flight-tracking software program detected the prime minister’s aircraft was within the air.
The 2 leaders mentioned commerce; border safety; fentanyl; protection issues, together with Nato; and Ukraine, together with China, vitality points and pipelines, together with those who feed Canadian oil and gasoline into the US.
Over a dinner that reportedly included a dish known as “Mary Trump’s Meat Loaf”, the pair additionally mentioned subsequent 12 months’s G7 assembly, which Trudeau will host in Kananaskis, Alberta – seven years after Trump abruptly left the 2018 G7 at Charlevoix, Quebec, amid a US-Canadian dispute over American metal and aluminum tariffs.
The Pennsylvania senator-elect Dave McCormick posted a picture to the social media platform X late Friday displaying Trudeau sitting beside Trump. Others within the image included Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary; Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, the decide for inside secretary; and the US consultant Mike Waltz of Florida, the decide for nationwide safety adviser.
Canadian officers included the general public security minister, Dominic LeBlanc, chargeable for border safety, and Trudeau’s chief of workers, Katie Telford. Canada’s ambassador to Washington, Kirsten Hillman, and Trudeau’s deputy chief of workers, Brian Clow, had been additionally on the dinner.
Trump lately claimed that “hundreds of individuals are pouring by Mexico and Canada, bringing crime and medicines at ranges by no means seen earlier than” and threatened to precise a “very massive worth” on the Mexican and Canadian economies in the event that they didn’t act.
However there was no indication from both facet that Trump plans to step again from his menace to impose steep tariffs on Canadian exports.
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LeBlanc stated Canada was ready to beef up border safety, with extra money for know-how, drones and extra Mounties and border guards on the forty ninth parallel.
Earlier on Friday, Trudeau informed reporters that he appeared ahead to having “plenty of nice conversations” with Trump and that the 2 would “work collectively to fulfill among the issues and reply to among the points”.
Trudeau additionally stated that it was “necessary to know is that Donald Trump, when he makes statements like that, he plans on carrying them out. There’s no query about it.
“Our accountability is to level out that on this method, he would really not simply be harming Canadians, who work so effectively with america, he would really be elevating costs for Americans as effectively, and hurting American trade and companies.”
The scramble to diffuse Trump’s tariff threats has additionally pre-occupied the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, in latest days.
On Thursday, Sheinbaum stated she had had a “very variety” telephone dialog with Trump wherein they mentioned immigration and fentanyl. She stated the dialog meant there “is not going to be a possible tariff warfare” between the US and Mexico.
However the two leaders differed on Trump’s declare in a publish on Fact Social that Sheinbaum had “agreed to cease Migration by Mexico, and into america, successfully closing our Southern Border”.
The Mexican president later stated she had not. “Every particular person has their very own method of speaking, however I can guarantee you, I assure you, that we by no means – moreover, we might be incapable of doing so – proposed that we might shut the border within the north [of Mexico], or within the south of america. It has by no means been our concept and, after all, we aren’t in settlement with that.”
Sheinbaum stated the pair had not mentioned tariffs however their dialog reassured her that no tit-for-tat tariff battle could be mandatory.
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