Canadians elected Mark Carney to do one big job: handle Donald Trump and everything he represents. After the new prime minister’s first face-to-face encounter with the president on Tuesday, we now have a much better idea of how that’s going to go.
Carney’s formula, judging by a riveting half-hour in the Oval Office, is to use a combination of patience and firmness, leavened by a dash of humour, to keep things civil. It was a deft performance under trying circumstances and I think he’ll get pretty high marks for successfully walking that treacherous tightrope.
The new PM did particularly well when Trump, inevitably, wandered into “51st state” territory, saying Canada joining the United States “would really be a wonderful marriage.” That’s the point where Carney absolutely had to push back, and his obviously well-prepared response fit the mood and the moment perfectly.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rebuffed President Donald Trump's push during an Oval Office meeting Tuesday for Canada to become the 51st state. (AP Video / May 6, 2025)
Rather than show anger, he gestured to the ornate Oval Office surroundings (“24-carat gold,” Trump boasted) and told the president “there are places that are never for sale — we’re sitting in one right now.” And “having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign the last several months, it’s not for sale — won’t be for sale, ever.”
This was said with a smile and a quick pivot to the idea of building a new partnership, giving Trump an easy off-ramp to end that particular line of talk, if he so wanted. But the president didn’t want. “Never say never,” he went on, prompting Carney to mouth “never” several times, all the time keeping a big smile on his face.
Carney didn’t say a lot during that tense half-hour, though he did offer Trump the rather ambiguous compliment that he’s a “transformational president.” Trump kept blustering on, often about things that have nothing to do with Canada, like the in Yemen and cost overruns at . As long as he was going on about that, at least he wasn’t abusing Canada.
Because there was a lot of abuse, once you got past his friendly remarks about Carney himself (“Canada chose a very talented person”). It’s a good thing Carney and his team lowered expectations for the meeting to just above floor level, because Trump repeated just about every insulting and disrespectful remark he’s ever made about this country.
President Donald Trump and Canada's new Prime Minister Mark Carney traded compliments during their first face-to-face meeting since Carney's election last month. Still, neither side showed signs of retreating from their gaping differences in an ongoing trade war. (AP Video / May 6, 2025)
There was the bit about the United States needing “nothing” from Canada, not its steel, not its energy, especially not its cars. There was his flat “no” when asked if there was anything Canada could do to get out from under tariffs. And there was his debunked claim that the U.S. “subsidizes” Canada to the tune of $200 billion a year.
A lot of people were studying every twitch and blink that went across Carney’s face as he sat through all this. The Star’s Tonda MacCharles asked the PM afterwards what was going through his mind, and Carney’s response to that was also pitch-perfect: “I’m glad you couldn’t tell what was going through my mind.” It’s not difficult to imagine, but it had to be left unsaid.
U.S. President Donald Trump and new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney faced off in the Oval Office on Tuesday and showed no signs of retreating from their gaping differences. (AP Video / May 6, 2025)
Given the power imbalance between the two countries, the PM had no choice but to stifle himself as the president rambled on. Rising to the bait risked getting, as we say these days, That’s no reflection on Carney or his leadership capacities; it’s just the brutal reality of dealing with a president who revels in bullying anyone he can.
But leaving aside the mostly positive atmospherics, and the fact that Trump doesn’t despise and disrespect Carney the way he did Justin Trudeau, where does Canada stand after Tuesday’s encounter?
Carney talked a lot about having “wide-ranging and constructive discussions” — the kind of words diplomats use when nothing concrete was accomplished but nothing terrible happened either.
Perhaps that’s all that can be expected at this point. Carney called the meeting the “end of the beginning” in the new Canada-U.S. relationship, whatever that turns out to be. It’s not clear from what happened on Tuesday if that means renegotiating the existing USMCA/CUSMA trade deal or scrapping it entirely for something new — Trump seemed to be juggling both thoughts in his head.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney faced off in the Oval Office on Tuesday and showed no signs of retreating from their gaping differences in a trade war that has shattered decades of trust between the two countries. (AP Video / May 6, 2025)
But it was clear that Trump hasn’t softened any of his positions on Canada. And we have a very long way to go before we get back to something resembling a normal relationship with the United States of Trump.
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