Donald Trump pledged to impose taxes on Canadian products when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrived in Florida on Friday for a meal at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago home.
The surprise meeting follows a week in which Mexico and Canada have rushed to mitigate the effects of Trump’s trade threats, which analysts have warned might have a significant negative impact on US consumers as well.
Before arriving at Mar-a-Lago, a beaming Trudeau was spotted leaving a hotel in West Palm Beach. He is the most recent high-profile visitor to Trump, whose second term, which begins in January, is already taking centre stage during the final months of President Joe Biden’s administration.
Flight trackers had first spotted a jet broadcasting the prime minister’s callsign making its way to the southern US state. A Canadian government source later told AFP that the two leaders were dining together.
Trump caused panic among some of the biggest US trading partners on Monday when he said he would impose tariffs of 25 percent on Mexican and Canadian imports and 10 percent on goods from China.
He accused the countries of not doing enough to halt the “invasion” of the US by drugs, “in particular fentanyl,” and undocumented migrants.
Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had a phone chat Wednesday, although the two leaders’ versions of what happened were very different.
The left-wing president of Mexico, according to Trump, “agreed to stop migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
Sheinbaum later claimed to have talked about long-standing anti-migration laws in Mexico that are backed by the US.
She claimed that the fear of a trade war had been minimised and that the discussions had shifted away from the danger of tariff increases.
