Prime Minister Mark Carney won praise from President Donald Trump in the Oval Office Tuesday, avoiding blow-ups or embarrassment, even though he fell short of a breakthrough in the trade stand-off between the two North American neighbors.
“We’ve come a long way over the last few months, actually, in terms of that relationship,” Trump declared, adding that he considered Carney “a world-class leader” and a tough negotiator: “I think they’re going to walk away very happy.”
“We have great love for each other,” Trump told Carney after the prime minister lauded Trump’s peace efforts around the world, including the Middle East. But the president added: “We have a natural conflict.”
Trump’s comments and the generally warm White House reception for the Canadian leader amounted to a win for Carney, who risked burning domestic political capital in Canada absent a deal to lift Trump’s punitive tariffs.
Trump’s remarks largely aligned with the expectations the Prime Minister’s Office set ahead of the meeting: the leaders needed face time to make progress on a complex economic relationship.
Trump tried to play defense for Carney at one point during a flurry of questions at their Oval Office photo-op, deflecting a question about why Canada couldn’t get a deal with the U.S. while the European Union pulled it off.
Asked by reporters what was holding up a trade agreement — given that Trump thinks Carney is such a “good man” who is doing “a great job” — the president responded, to laughter: “Because I want to be a great man, too.”
The upbeat rapport between the prime minister and the president follows months of close contact. Carney won an April election in large part on a promise to take on Trump and repair Canada’s tariff-battered economy. The two have exchanged calls and texts regularly, projecting a thaw in cross-border tensions. But that détente is tenuous — last week, Trump revived his familiar “51st state” jab at Canada in remarks to U.S. generals.
Trump joked in the Oval Office about “the merger” of Canada and the U.S., but Carney defused the situation: “That wasn’t where I was going.”
Even though Carney has softened his approach, including removing countertariffs on many U.S. products, he has yet to strike a trade deal with Trump. Lately, he has turned his attention to next year’s mandatory review of the United States-Mexico Canada Agreement, which currently exempts approximately 85 percent of Canadian products from tariffs.
Trump said he is keeping an open mind about the next iteration of USMCA, suggesting he could be open to a bilateral deal with Canada at the expense of Mexico.
“We’re allowed to do different deals if we want,” Trump said. “I want to make whatever the best deal is for this country, and also very much with Canada in mind.”
Carney is facing domestic pressure to push Trump to lift or reduce levies of 50 percent on steel and aluminum imports, as well as additional tariffs on some autos, softwood lumber and copper. Canada’s 25 percent countertariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum remain.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday if Carney can’t forge a deal with Trump soon, it’s time to bring back more retaliatory tariffs.
“We need to hit back hard,” Ford told reporters in Toronto. “You sure don’t sit back and get beat up by a bully every single day. It’s like a kid going in the school yard and getting punched in the face every day.”
But Ford added this caveat: “Maybe Prime Minister Carney knows something I don’t know. And if that’s the case, he should sit down with the premiers and explain that.”
Canada’s United Steelworkers union director Marty Warren said in a statement Tuesday that, “we need urgent action — not more concessions.”
“Canada’s softwood lumber industry is on the brink of collapse,” Warren added.
A senior Canadian official, who briefed POLITICO in advance of the meeting, said Carney had two trade goals for the trip. The prime minister was eager to “set the playing field early” on USMCA renewal, and to make progress toward that elusive new economic and security pact.
Another senior Canadian official, who briefed POLITICO under the same terms, downplayed expectations. “To expect a deal, per se, I think would be far-fetched,” they said.
Speaking Tuesday on Parliament Hill, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said while she hoped for a breakthrough in Washington, there is value in face time.
“A lot of times these trade deals get advanced because of a good personal relationship between the leaders,” Smith said. “They seem to have started off on a good foot.”
The Carney-Trump meeting occurred on the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza — a conflict Trump has decided he wants to end with an ambitious 20-point peace plan that is forcing negotiations between Hamas and Israel.
Canada is partially offside with Trump’s Middle East peace plan because it has recognized Palestinian statehood alongside Britain, France, Australia and most of America’s major allies.
While Carney’s decision has drawn Trump’s ire, it has not impeded trade talks, in part because Carney has heaped praise on the president’s Middle East peace efforts.
“For the first time in decades, hundreds of years, thousands of years, this prospect of peace that you’ve made possible, Canada stands foursquare behind those efforts,” Carney told Trump Tuesday.
