Canada's Trudeau arrives in Florida for meeting with Trump

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is meeting with President-elect Donald Trump on Friday, according to people familiar with their plans, as the incoming U.S. leader threatens to implement fresh tariffs on neighboring countries unless they halt the flow of illegal drugs and undocumented migrants across borders.

Trudeau landed in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Friday evening, people familiar with the plans said, speaking on condition of anonymity to share details on the meeting.

Trump earlier this week vowed to hit Canada and Mexico as well as China with additional tariffs, casting the levies as necessary to secure U.S. borders, a top concern of voters in November’s presidential election.

The president-elect said he would impose additional 10% tariffs on goods from China and 25% tariffs on all products from Mexico and Canada if they failed to act.

Trump’s first specific threat to curb global trade flows since his election has roiled markets. Trump’s threats, which he made on his Truth Social network, sent the Canadian dollar falling. That evening, Trudeau contacted the president-elect in a phone call to discuss border security and trade, according to a government official with knowledge of the matter.

The Canadian prime minister noted that the number of migrants who cross the country’s border into the U.S. is minuscule compared to those who make their way from Mexico, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Canadian officials in recent days have also been quick to insist that they are working closely with the U.S. to combat the flow of fentanyl — a deadly synthetic opioid that has sparked a public health crisis in the U.S.

The volume of fentanyl seized at the Mexican border since the beginning of 2022 is about 1,000 times greater than what has been captured at the Canadian border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

Still, Trudeau is under pressure at home to step up border security and defense spending to assuage Trump’s concerns. Ontario’s Doug Ford, the leader of Canada’s most populous province, said after a meeting of the premiers and prime minister that he has been pushing Trudeau for months to show that Canada will work to address U.S. economic and security worries.

Trudeau will be the first Group of Seven leader to have a face-to-face meeting with Trump since the U.S. election.

“The symbolism of Trudeau going down to Palm Beach on bended knee to say ‘Please don’t’ is very, very powerful,” said Fen Hampson, professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa.

“The stakes are enormously high and Trudeau has to deliver on this,” Hampson said. “Otherwise, it’s going to be seen by Canadians as a failed mission, because we all know why he’s going down there and it’s not to baste the turkey for Trump.”

Canada and the U.S. have one of the world’s largest bilateral trading relationships, worth more than $900 billion a year, and it’s the largest external supplier of crude oil to the U.S., pumping millions of barrels a day to refineries in the Midwest and elsewhere. Economists see Mexico and Canada taking the biggest economic hit if Trump follows through on his pledge for broad tariffs against U.S. imports.

Trump has made tariffs a centerpiece of his economic agenda, vowing to use them across the board against both U.S. allies and adversaries to extract concessions and force businesses to reshore manufacturing jobs. Mainstream economists have warned that the levies threaten to raise prices for consumers, would fail to raise the revenue he is predicting and are poised to reduce or redirect trade flows.

Tariffs on Mexico and Canada also threaten to reignite a trade feud from Trump’s first term in office, when he forced the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The rebranded trade pact, dubbed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, allows for duty-free trade across a wide range of sectors, while changing the regulations for a variety of industries including auto manufacturing.

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(With assistance from Derek Decloet, Randy Thanthong-Knight, Thomas Seal and Laura Dhillon Kane.)

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