Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to Florida on Friday to dine with Donald Trump at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate as the future US leader vowed to impose tariffs on Canadian imports, AFP reported.
The surprise meeting came at the end of a week in which Canada and Mexico have been trying to soften the blow of Trump’s trade threats, which experts warn could hit American consumers hard.
A smiling Trudeau was seen leaving a West Palm Beach hotel before arriving at Mar-a-Lago.
A plane bearing the Canadian prime minister’s call sign was first spotted en route to the southern US state, according to flight tracking data. A Canadian government source later told AFP that the two leaders had dined together.
Trump sent panic through some of the US’s biggest trading partners on Monday when he said he would impose tariffs of 25 per cent on imports from Mexico and Canada and 10 per cent on goods from China.
He accused those countries of not doing enough to stop the “invasion” of drugs, “particularly fentanyl,” and illegal immigrants into the U.S.
On Wednesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke to Trump by phone, though the two leaders gave starkly different accounts of the conversation.
Trump claimed that the Mexican president “agreed to stop migration through Mexico and into the United States, effectively closing our southern border.”
Sheinbaum later said she discussed the U.S.-backed anti-immigration policies that have long been in place in Mexico.
She said the talks no longer revolved around the threat of higher tariffs.