Canadian ministers leave US meeting without assurances on tariffs

Two Canadian cabinet ministers left a meeting at Mar-a-Lago without assurances President-elect Donald Trump will back away from threatened tariffs on all products from the major American trading partner.

The Canadians called the talks “productive” and said there would be further discussions, but one official said the Americans remain fixated on the US trade deficit with Canada.

Finance minister Dominic LeBlanc and foreign minister Melanie Joly met with Howard Lutnick, Mr Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, as well as North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, the president-elect’s pick to lead the Interior Department.

Mr Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on all Canadian products if its neighbour does not stem what he calls a flow of migrants and fentanyl into the United States — even though far fewer of each cross into the US from Canada than from Mexico, which Mr Trump has also threatened.

“Minister LeBlanc and Minister Joly had a positive, productive meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Howard Lutnick and Doug Burgum, as a follow-up to the dinner between the Prime Minister and President Trump last month,” said Jean-Sebastien Comeau, a spokesman for Mr LeBlanc.

He said both ministers outlined the measures in Canada’s billion-dollar plan to increase security at the border and reiterated “the shared commitment to strengthen border security as well as combat the harm caused by fentanyl to save Canadian and American lives”.

Mr Comeau said Mr Lutnick and Mr Burgum agreed to relay the information to Mr Trump.

A senior Canadian official, however, said the Americans remain preoccupied with the US trade deficit with Canada and want it to shrink.

Mr Trump has made an issue of the US trade deficit, erroneously calling it a subsidy.

Canada’s ambassador to Washington Kirsten Hillman has said the US had a 75 billion dollar (£59.6 billion) trade deficit with Canada last year.

But she noted a third of what Canada sells to the US is energy exports and there is a deficit when oil prices are high.

About 60% of US crude oil imports and 85% of US electricity imports are from Canada. Alberta alone sends 4.3 million barrels of oil per day to the US, which tends to consume about 20 million barrels a day.

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Further discussions are expected in the coming weeks. Ms Joly will also have dinner with US Senator Lindsey Graham on Friday.

Mr Trump has been trolling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on social media in recent weeks by calling him the Governor of the 51st state.

Mr Trudeau has not directly responded, but did post a link on Thursday to a six-minute video on YouTube from 2010 in which American NBC journalist Tom Brokaw “explains Canada to Americans”.

“Some information about Canada for Americans,” Mr Trudeau wrote in the post on X.

The video, which originally aired during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, explains similarities between the two countries, the massive trading relationship and the actions of the Canadian military in the Second World War and Afghanistan.

“In our darkest hours Canada has been with us,” Mr Brokaw says in the video. “In the long history of sovereign neighbours there has never been a relationship as close, productive and peaceful as the US and Canada.”

Mr Trudeau has told Mr Trump that Americans would also suffer if the president-elect follows through on a plan to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian products.

Nearly 3.6 billion Canadian dollars (£2 billion) worth of goods and services cross the border daily. Canada is the top export destination for 36 US states.

US customs agents seized 43lb of fentanyl at the Canadian border during the last fiscal year, compared with 21,100lb at the Mexican border.

The US Border Patrol reported 1.53 million encounters with migrants at the southwest border with Mexico between October 2023 and September 2024.

That compares to 23,721 encounters at the Canadian border during that time.