May 6 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump met with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday, a week after Carney’s Liberal Party succeeded in elections considered to be influenced by Trump’s comments and economic moves made against Canada.
During their Oval Office meeting in the afternoon, Carney told the U.S. president that Canada will never be for sale. His comments come after Trump’s recent repeated calls to make the North American nation the 51st state of the United States.
“There are some places that are never for sale,” Carney said, according to CNBC.
Later, though, Trump refused to let go of the idea, suggesting to the Canadian leader, “Never say never.”
Despite the differing viewpoints on the highly-charged topic, Trump reassured everyone that the United States and Canada remain on friendly terms. “Regardless of anything, we’re going to be friends with Canada,” Trump said.
Carney’s trip to the United States started by focusing on economic cooperation between two nations that once shared it robustly and willingly.
“Canada and the United States are strongest when we work together and that work starts now,” Carney posted to X Monday after his plane touched down in Washington.
The post was a follow-up to what Carney said Friday in regard to Tuesday’s meeting, that they would “focus on addressing immediate trade pressures” and “the future economic and security relationship between our two sovereign nations.”
The Trump administration placed a 25% import tariff on all Canadian goods not covered by the USMCA trade agreement on March 4, which Trump called a punitive move based on allegations that Canada hadn’t properly stopped the entry of migrants and fentanyl into the United States. Canada responded with tariffs on many American goods.
Canada’s Liberal Party rode a wave of anti-American sentiment led vociferously by Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada, who has described Trump’s actions as a “betrayal” and a fundamental shift in the U.S.-Canada relationship.
Trump has also soured the relationship between the two countries by repeatedly commenting that he is interested in annexing Canada to become a U.S. State.
He posted to his Truth Social account on April 28 when Carney was announced the election winner, that duties would disappear and taxes would be halved “if Canada becomes the cherished 51st State of the United States of America.”
“America can no longer subsidize Canada with the hundreds of billions of dollars a year that we have been spending in the past,” and that “It makes no sense unless Canada is a state,” Trump wrote.
During his victory speech, Carney told the crowd that Trump’s comments weren’t “idle threats,” and that “President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never, ever happen.”
