Canada’s prime minister said Saturday that Justin Trudeau had an “excellent conversation” with Donald Trump at the president-elect’s Florida estate, as the United States’ neighbors struggle to blunt the impact of Trump’s trade threats.
Trudeau flew in for dinner at Mar-a-Lago on Friday after Trump announced plans for import tariffs against Canada and Mexico and rival China earlier this week.
“It was an excellent conversation,” Trudeau told reporters Saturday morning as he left a hotel in West Palm Beach to catch a flight back to Canada.
Trudeau was the latest high-profile guest of Trump, whose impending second term — which begins in January — is already dominating the last few months of President Joe Biden’s administration.
A photo released by Pennsylvania senator-elect David McCormick shows Trump and Trudeau together at a table with a dozen others, including Howard Lutnick, Donald Trump’s choice for commerce secretary, and Mike Waltz, his choice for national security adviser. The guests are surrounded.
In a social media post on Monday, Trump said he would impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, accusing America’s two neighbors of allowing the “invasion” of the United States by illegal drugs, namely fentanyl, and undocumented immigrants. .
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke with Trump by phone on Wednesday, although the details of the two leaders’ conversations differed significantly.
Trump claimed that Mexico’s leftist president “has agreed to halt migration through Mexico and into the United States, effectively closing our southern border.”
Sheinbaum later said they had discussed the US-backed anti-immigration policies long implemented in Mexico.
After that, negotiations no longer revolved around the threat of tariff hikes, he said, reducing the risk of a trade war.
trade worth billions
Biden warned the same day that Trump’s tariff threats could “damage” Washington’s relations with Ottawa and Mexico City.
“I think that’s a counterproductive thing to do,” Biden told reporters.
For Canada, the risks of any new tariffs are too high.
More than three-quarters of Canadian exports, or C$592.7 billion ($423 billion), went to the United States last year, and nearly two million Canadian jobs depend on trade.
Canada is considering possible retaliatory tariffs against the United States, a Canadian government source told AFP.
Some analysts have suggested that Trump’s tariff threat may be a fool’s errand or an early salvo for future trade negotiations. But Trudeau rejected those views while speaking to reporters in Prince Edward Island province.
“Donald Trump, when he makes statements like this, he plans to enforce them,” Trudeau said. “There’s no question about it.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
