Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, is trying to navigate Trump’s aggression in a crucial meeting this morning after Trump’s post on Truth Social asserted that the US doesn’t need anything from Canada and introduced 15% tariffs on Canadian goods.
Trump’s actions have already begun to affect big and small American businesses alike, with some small companies needing to add tariff taxes on their goods thereby upping consumer costs, and some larger companies losing billions of dollars thanks to Trump’s tariffs.
Carney’s response to Trump’s statements during the last Prime Minister election helped his Liberal Party win the vote, as many Canadians are outraged by Trump’s wanting to make Canada the 51st state of the United States. Carney’s response was calm yet firm, saying he would “stand up” to the president, while others like Professor of Canadian history and international relations at the University of Toronto, Robert Bothwell, believes that Carney shouldn’t meet with Trump because it’s not in Carney’s nor Canada’s best interest.
According to AP News, Bothwell also noted that Trump has made statements about tariffs in the past that he retracted relatively quickly after making them. He stated that whatever Trump says “may not matter as much in the summer as it does today because every time he’s made one of these announcements, next week it’s, ‘Oh, I had my fingers crossed. I didn’t mean it’.”
Despite Trump’s statements about the US’s relationship with Canada, when asked about the meeting with Carney, he claimed he didn’t know why they would be meeting and speculated that Carney might want to make a deal.
