Carney meets with Trump in Washington on trade, USMCA
發佈日期: 2025-10-08 20:52
TVB News
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has made his second visit to the White House in five months, in hopes for finding some relief on sector-specific tariffs ahead of next year's review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Yet, according to the reports, business groups speculate that no deal is likely to be announced to end the U.S. punitive tariffs.
The two-and-a-half-hour talk between U.S. President Donald Trump and the Canadian leader has wrapped up in the Oval Office on Tuesday without a concrete deal.
Among the topics in discussion were trade and the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement enacted during Trump's first presidency, which is up for review in 2026.
Carney has said he deemed the USMCA as an advantage for his country and sought to reassure Canadians that 85 percent of their trade with the U.S. will remain duty-free under the terms.
Trump suggested that he was open to extending the free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada through a renegotiation or seeking different deals.
The U.S. president added they might make deals that are better for the individual countries while ruling out a completely tariff-free agreement.
His administration earlier imposed heavy import taxes on some of Canada's key sectors such as automobiles, steel, aluminium and softwood lumber, citing national security concerns.
Trump characterized Canada as an economic competitor that the United States has a "natural conflict" with, a point to which Carney disagreed.
Trump said, "We want Canada to do great," but "there's a point at which we also want the same business," and expressed his desire to replace Canadian-made vehicles and steel with American production.
Trump made a joking reference to a "merger" between the two nations during Tuesday's meeting after his comments about annexing Canada into the U.S.'s "51st state" dominated the headlines for months.
Canada's minister in charge of relations with the U.S., Dominic LeBlanc, said Trump had directed his cabinet secretaries to quickly land sector-specific trade deals on steel, aluminum and energy.
He said: "I think you saw the president acknowledging in a very positive way the work that Canada and the United States have been doing to advance our security and economic relationship. I thought it was the first time that I'd seen the president speak publicly in detail about how difficult necessarily these conversations are, because we have probably the two most integrated economies in the world in terms of trading partners of the United States."
LeBlanc said the conversations would continue.
