Prime Minister Mark Carney will meet his U.S. counterpart Tuesday for a high-stakes White House meeting — a face-to-face that comes as bilateral relations are at their lowest point in decades and with a trade war raging.
Carney triumphed in last week’s election in part because of his promise to steadfastly defend Canada in the face of President Donald Trump’s punishing tariffs and his 51st state taunts.
Now, the country is expecting Carney to deliver some signs of progress and show that his new Liberal government may be able to bring this fractious era to a close.
Carney has set low expectations for this meeting, suggesting it may be a while yet before the two countries can craft a new economic and security arrangement now that he says the last one is “over.”
“I’m not pretending these discussions will be easy. They won’t proceed in a straight line, there will be zigs and zags, ups and downs,” he told reporters late last week.
Asked on Monday what he expects from the meeting, Trump said he didn’t know.
“He’s coming to see me. I’m not sure what he wants to see me about, but I guess he wants to make a deal. Everybody does,” Trump said.
A senior Canadian government official, speaking to CBC News on background ahead of the meeting, said this is the first of what will likely be more meetings between the leaders as the two sides start the work of crafting a new partnership.
Carney has some alone time scheduled with the president, beyond the glare of the TV lights, and it’s there that the work of getting acquainted and improving relations will begin, the official said.
Laura Dawson is a Canada-U.S. relations expert and the executive director of the Future Borders Coalition.
She said there may not be a satisfactory end to these trade tensions until Carney and his team broker a new Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) with Trump, which is up for review next year.
While it may be painful to endure tariffs until then, Dawson said it’s in Canada’s best interest not to rush into a deal.
“Right now, Trump feels like he has all the cards. If we settle very, very quickly, it wouldn’t be a good deal for Canada. You only get sharp and quick deals if the other side gives in,” she said in an interview.
As part of the push to overhaul the relationship, Carney will be accompanied by three cabinet ministers who have been active on the Canada-U.S. file since relations went sideways after the presidential election last fall: International Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Public Safety Minister David McGuinty.
LeBlanc has a direct line to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the president’s tariff czar, while Joly has been communicating with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has emerged as a trusted Trump lieutenant in the first 100 days of the administration.
McGuinty, meanwhile, has been leading the federal government’s border security build-up to appease Trump’s fentanyl and migrant concerns, even though data shows Canada isn’t much of a problem compared to Mexico. The latest figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) show five kilograms of fentanyl have been seized at the northern border so far this year — compared 3,040 kilograms at the southwestern one.
Lutnick spouted off against Canada in an interview with Fox Business just moments after Carney’s plane touched down in D.C. on Monday, saying the country has as a “socialist” regime and it’s “basically been feeding off of us for decades upon decades upon decades.”
Beyond the substantive policy changes that could emerge from these meetings, Carney is also looking to avoid this sort of disparaging talk and a possible Oval Office ambush like the one Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy endured earlier this year.
Vice-President JD Vance, who played a leading role in that confrontation, is expected to be perched on the same couch, at Trump’s side, for the Carney meeting.
Carney is an experienced global player and he will have been well briefed by the diplomats in Washington about a possible standoff, Dawson said.
“Mark Carney has been through this before — he’s not going to clutch his pearls and run out of the room. If there’s a statement that’s a little bit of untoward, he’s going to find a way to push through it in as productive a way as possible,” she said.
But there’s no doubt Carney’s job is complicated by the president’s sometimes erratic behaviour and outbursts.
Trump has repeatedly raised the prospect of Canada becoming part of the U.S., saying again Sunday he would love to see the “artificial line” between the two countries erased to create a “beautiful” country that runs from the Gulf Coast to the Arctic Circle — something Carney has said will “never, ever” happen.
Despite trade data that shows the U.S. relies on Canadian goods — notably importing some four million barrels of oil a day — Trump told Meet the Press again over the weekend that he doesn’t need “anything” from Canada.
Trump meeting ‘extremely risky’ for Carney, says ex-Canadian diplomat
Still, there are signs Trump is less hostile than he was just a few months ago.
While he branded former prime minister Justin Trudeau “the governor” in a show of disrespect, Trump has called Carney “a nice gentleman” and said “we’re going to have a great relationship.”
U.S. journalists have also reported Trump was delighted his interventions seemingly had an impact on Canada’s vote.
There’s some hope that those small signs of goodwill could result in some sort of reprieve for Canada, no matter how unlikely it may seem at this stage.
“Our prime minister shows strength and that is respected by President Trump,” said Candace Laing, the CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
“It is important these two leaders have a good connection established so that future communication and follow-ups are easy,” she said.
Trump is wedded to tariffs as a revenue-generating tool and a way to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. and it may be hard to move him from that position, said Everett Eissenstat, who served as deputy director of Trump’s National Economic Council during the president’s first term.
“It’s unlikely that the relationship will be sorted out within a single meeting, but it’s certainly a good start,” he said.
