At around 11.30am US time on Tuesday morning, Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, will make the short motorcade drive from Blair House to where US president Donald Trump will be waiting at the doorway of the West Wing.
Their meeting, from the opening handshake on, will stress-test the current state of what the visitor called “the greatest friendship between two countries the world has ever seen”.
It will make for a riveting encounter. On Sunday, during an in-depth interview to mark his 100 days in office, Trump was adamant that the idea of Canada as a “51st state” still appeals to him but, unlike his intentions towards Greenland, he ruled out the idea of an annexation involving Canada through force.
Trump’s imperious attitude towards Canada, from the staggering imposition of tariffs at the outset of his administration, to the mocking references to outgoing prime minister Justin Trudeau as “governor” started a blaze of national fervour across Canada which has intensified in the months since.
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The Trump threat was instrumental in completely flipping the outcome of the April election to a startling degree. At the start of the year, the Liberal Party, of which Carney is now leader, had fallen to 16 per cent support, with the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, considered unassailable at 45 per cent.
Carney emerged during the sudden deep freeze in US-Canada relations as the perfect figure to deal with the unexpected emergency: clear-spoken, sombre, with a peerless global financial background and a willingness to confront the US president’s will with Canadian iron will. For his final election rally, he chose Windsor, Ontario, with his back to the Detroit river and the city itself.
“Somehow, for all his talk to the working people, I don’t think president Trump is in Detroit tonight,” he said that afternoon. “He has launched a trade war that has literally ruptured the global economy and in the process he has betrayed us in Canada. I’ve recognised that it’s a tragedy. But it is also a reality we must recognise. We are in the shadow of the Ambassador bridge, the busiest international crossing in North America, route for more than a quarter of all goods traded between Canada and the United States, $140 billion a year, $400 million every single day. For almost a century it stood as a symbol of co-operation and peace. A symbol of the greatest friendship between two countries the world has ever seen. But that has changed. And it wasn’t us who did the changing.”
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It was a message Canada heard to the extent that Poilievre lost not just the prime ministership but the Carleton district seat he had held for two decades. Now Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, finds himself leading a minority government in what is his first role in elected office, inheriting a domestic economy on the brink of recession, a housing affordability crisis, as well as negotiating terms with his truculent neighbour.
The congratulatory phone call from Trump to Carney reportedly went well. The Canadian, in his first piece of guarded flattery to Trump, described the American as a proven negotiator who respects strength. The expectation is that the Canada delegation will come to the White House with some sort of proposal Trump may find appealing.
Carney has spoken of offering critical minerals as well as satisfying Trump’s border security concerns in the hope of reaching agreement to end the tariffs which, inadvertently, has led to his meeting at the White House to forge a new understanding. It may be a difficult sell.
“We subsidise Canada to the tune of $200 billion a year,” Trump said on Sunday. “We don’t need their cars. In fact, we don’t want their cars. We don’t need their energy. We don’t even want their energy. We have more than they do.”
