Prime Minister Justin Trudeau exits the Delta Hotels by Marriott West Palm Beach on Nov. 30 in Palm Beach, Fla.Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discussed border security, trade and defence with Donald Trump at a three-hour dinner Friday as he tried to dissuade the president-elect from following through on a threat to slap a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian products.
He returned home Saturday morning, however, without any guarantees that Mr. Trump would drop the tariffs.
Mr. Trudeau’s visit, which makes him the first G7 leader to meet with Mr. Trump in person since the U.S. presidential election earlier this month, was initially kept secret by both sides.
Only after its conclusion, the president-elect posted a photograph of himself, the Prime Minister and several other officials sitting at a round table. “With an interesting special guest at the head table at Mar-A-Lago,” he wrote.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump described the meeting as “very productive” and said Mr. Trudeau had “made a commitment to work with us to end” the U.S.’s drug crisis. In a social media post, the president-elect did not say anything further about tariffs but made clear that the pair also discussed trade.
“I just had a very productive meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, where we discussed many important topics that will require both Countries to work together to address, like the Fentanyl and Drug Crisis that has decimated so many lives as a result of Illegal Immigration, Fair Trade Deals that do not jeopardize American Workers, and the massive Trade Deficit the U.S. has with Canada,” he wrote.
Energy and the Arctic were other topics of conversation, Trump wrote, without mentioning what actions, if any, Canada had agreed to take or how they would affect his tariff promise.
Visible in the photo Mr. Trump posted to social media – and confirmed by a Canadian government source – were Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, whose responsibilities include the Canada Border Services Agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Katie Telford, Mr. Trudeau’s chief of staff.
The goal of Mr. Trudeau’s Mar-a-Lago trip was to convey to Mr. Trump Ottawa’s plans for increased border security measures – as the government already signalled to Canadians this past week – a source said.
The Canadians recounted their plans to buy helicopters and drones and fund extra staff as part of an infusion of money into CBSA and the RCMP.
The source said it appeared that Mr. Trump’s team liked what he was hearing, and the plan now is for Canada to follow up with concrete actions. The border measure investments will happen in short order, the source said.
The official said the conversation between the leaders was wide-ranging, including trade, border security, fentanyl, NATO, Ukraine, icebreakers, China, several oil and gas pipelines, liquid natural gas and next year’s G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta. The dinner started at 7:45 p.m. and lasted a little under three hours.
Mr. Trump was in high spirits during the dinner with Mr. Trudeau and would at times play music from his iPad through patio speakers including two versions of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah,’ a song from the musical Cats as well as work by the opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, a source said.
Later on Saturday, Mr. Trudeau posted a photo of him and Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago on X, formerly Twitter, saying: “Thanks for dinner last night, President Trump. I look forward to the work we can do together, again.”
Thanks for dinner last night, President Trump. I look forward to the work we can do together, again. pic.twitter.com/lAWFMTtQt7
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) November 30, 2024
Mr. Trump this past Monday said his threatened tariffs would remain in place until Canada and Mexico stopped illegal migration and drug smuggling into the United States. According to numbers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in the last fiscal year, U.S. border patrol officers stopped people 23,721 times trying to cross illegally from Canada, more than double the 10,021 the year before. But it pales in comparison with the Mexican border, where border patrol officers stopped people more than 1.5 million times in the same time period.
According to U.S. government figures, border guards intercepted 19.5 kilograms of fentanyl along the Canadian border last year, which is 0.2 per cent of the nearly 11 tonnes intercepted nationwide.
Exiting his hotel in Florida this morning Mr. Trudeau told media that he had an “excellent conversation” with Mr. Trump.
The trip was also meant as a social occasion – an opportunity for Mr. Trudeau and his circle to build rapport and open up channels of communication with the incoming administration, a source said.
Joining Mr. Trump on the U.S. side were three of his cabinet picks: Howard Lutnick, Mike Waltz and Doug Bergum, along with their wives. Pennsylvania senator-elect Dave McCormick and his wife, former White House adviser Dina Powell, were also in attendance.
Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., Kirsten Hillman, and Ms. Telford’s deputy, Brian Clow, made the trip to Mar-a-Lago as well, but did not join the two leaders at the dinner table, said the source.
The Globe and Mail is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The first indication of the trip came Friday afternoon when flight trackers spotted a CC-144C Challenger broadcasting the call sign CFC01 flying from Ottawa to Florida. Steffan Watkins, an Ottawa-based consultant who tracks aircraft and ships, said a flight carrying that call sign typically means the Prime Minster or VIPs are aboard.
During an unrelated event in Prince Edward Island earlier on Friday, Mr. Trudeau said he planned to have “lots of great conversations” with Mr. Trump. “Ultimately, it is through lots of constructive, real conversations with President Trump that I’m going to have that will keep us moving forward,” he said.
Mr. Trump has also promised to renegotiate the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that governs continental trade.
His promised levies would hit the Canadian economy hard because the United States is Canada’s biggest trading partner. In 2023, Canada exported $592.7-billion in goods to the U.S. – more than 77 per cent of this country’s total exports that year. They would also, however, cause serious economic pain to U.S. consumers, such as by driving up the price of gasoline, because the U.S. relies on Canada for more than half of its petroleum imports.
Mr. Lutnick, a Wall Street CEO and Trump campaign donor, has been tapped by the president-elect to oversee trade policy as commerce secretary. On the campaign trail, he enthusiastically advocated for tariffs.
Mr. Waltz, a Florida member of Congress, is the pick for national-security adviser. He has previously expressed his dislike of the prime minister. On X this past spring, he encouraged people to watch a clip of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre making fun of Mr. Trudeau during Question Period and cheered the prospect that Mr. Trudeau will lose next year’s election.
His wife, Julia Nesheiwat, who also attended the dinner on Friday, is a vice-president at Calgary-based pipeline company TCE.
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One Canadian official said the company’s planned Keystone XL pipeline, which Mr. Trump supported during his previous term, but which President Joe Biden blocked on his first day in office, came up at the dinner. The official said the group also discussed Enbridge’s Line 5 and the expansion of the federal government-owned Trans Mountain pipeline. The two sides were aligned in favour of all of the lines, the source said.
Mr. Bergum, the Governor of North Dakota, is Mr. Trump’s nominee for interior secretary and will lead an energy council with a mandate to expand U.S. oil and gas production.
Ms. Powell, who served as a deputy national-security adviser during Mr. Trump’s first term, was one of the Trudeau government’s key contacts in that administration. She was one of the few U.S. officials close to Mr. Trump who advocated for a less protectionist trade agenda.
Mr. Trudeau had a difficult history with Mr. Trump: during his first term in the White House, Mr. Trump made protectionist demands during USMCA talks, imposed tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, and called Mr. Trudeau “dishonest” and “weak” on social media.
In the end, however, Canada got the U.S. tariffs lifted and crafted a USMCA trade deal that mostly preserved the open market between the three countries.
Much of Mr. Trudeau’s strategy involved building personal connections, including by having Canadian officials establish informal back channels to people close to Mr. Trump. The Trudeau government renewed this push early this year in anticipation that Mr. Trump might return to the presidency.
Mr. Trump has indicated his dissatisfaction with USMCA because it did not create as many auto manufacturing jobs in the U.S. as he had hoped. He has also accused Mexico of setting itself up as a potential back door for Chinese auto companies to enter the U.S. market.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump expanded his tariff threat to more countries.
In a social media post, he warned the BRICS countries, a group of nine countries include Brazil, Russia, India, China and Iran, that as president he will slap a 100 per cent tariff on all their products if they proceed with plans to create a new currency to replace the U.S. dollar in international transactions.
If BRICS countries establish a new currency, or back an alternate currency, they “should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. economy,” he said in his post. “They can go find another ‘sucker.’”