pc28����

As Carney was flying to Joint Base Andrews outside the capital, Trump was already airily dissing their Tuesday tête-à-tête. “I’m not sure what he wants to see me about, but I guess he wants to make a deal,” he said. “Everybody does.”

Carney may emerge from his first face-to-face meeting with Trump with punitive tariffs on Canadian autos, steel and aluminum still in place, new threats in the offing, and nothing more than a promise for how future trade and security talks should unfold.

That would be a win in the eyes of key stakeholders and some premiers.

Several told the Star Monday that it’s unrealistic to expect the tariffs would be immediately lifted.

“I think that’s asking a lot,” said Jean Simard, a spokesman for the Aluminum Association of Canada, adding that the economic impact is starting to be felt across U.S. supply chains, and that will soon be apparent to Trump.

Flavio Volpe, head of the Auto Parts Manufacturers Association, said “you don’t go into a meeting like this saying you’re going to get some concession against these tariff threats” or else.

Rather, they and others expect success for Carney is more about framing the path forward, what will be on the agenda in a review next year of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico free trade deal, whether those talks would start earlier (which would be a concession from Canada as it is not up for renegotiation), and what additional things might be now on the table that weren’t when it was originally signed in 2018. Trump hailed the deal as a win at the time, saying it “changes the trade landscape forever.” Yet it didn’t account for a broader range of issues now in play, such as artificial intelligence, critical minerals, potash, uranium or energy.

“Does it mean renegotiating? Could it be side agreements that could be annexed to the main agreement in order to avoid reopening the whole thing?” said Simard. “Because it’s like reopening the Canadian Constitution — if you do that, you know where you start, but you don’t know where and when it will end.”

On Monday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox News dismissively that it would be “complex” to get a new trade deal with Canada “because they have been basically feeding off of us for decades upon decades upon decades, right? They have their socialist regime, and it’s basically feeding off of America. I mean, the president calls it out all the time, why do we make cars in Canada? Why do we do our films in Canada? Come on.” 

Lutnick predicted that it would be a “fascinating meeting” between the two leaders, but added, “I just don’t see how it works out so perfect.”

Since Trump set out to change the global trading landscape with new tariffs against Canada and Mexico, and with worldwide import duties (briefly on pause), global leaders have travelled to Washington to meet him. A senior Ontario official close to the file said they have not left with a consistent takeaway.

“The biggest challenge the world is facing is no one really knows what the Trump administration wants to achieve and that makes it hard to sort of anchor a strategy” for how respond, said the official, whom the Star agreed not to identify in order talk frankly about sensitive trade talks.

For Carney’s team, “the challenge will be understanding” Trump’s objective, and then ensuring Trump’s “objectives are maintained because they change often, and they change fast,” said the official.

“I think we should be realistic about what success looks like tomorrow.”

Carney may need to “pivot” quickly, the official added, because a new trilateral free trade deal may be hard to achieve. “We’ve heard loud and clear from folks in the Trump administration that (separate trade deals with Canada and Mexico) is not an unlikely outcome out of all of this.”

For the auto and aluminum sector representatives, it makes little sense to pivot away from the trilateral pact to bilateral deals, because their sectors are not only integrated but work across borders to stem threats from cheap Chinese imports.

Volpe tempered his expectations. If Carney “came out with some concessions against current threats, that’d be great,” he said. “But I don’t expect the prime minister to go in hard negotiating on a first meeting.”

Instead it will be a “conversation” in which Trump may come to “understand the intrinsic value of a Mark Carney-Canada partnership,” in order to show the world it’s not just chaos at his White House, Volpe said.

“He surrounded himself with Wall Street guys who are much louder than anything we’re all used to, but the Wall Street guys know who Mark Carney is,” said Volpe.

Carney landed just after 4 p.m. Monday and was set for a brief meeting organized by the Business Council of Canada with Canadian and American business leaders. On Tuesday, he has about three hours of meetings at the White House, including a working lunch with Trump and other officials, and a meeting with just Trump.

Over the weekend, Trump repeated his goal of making Canada his country’s 51st state, said he’d raise it with Carney. He also levelled a new threat against the U.S. filmmaking industry, promising tariffs that would directly affect film and television production in Canada.

Carney sought to lower expectations Friday when he said his focus is on “both immediate trade pressures and the broader future economic and security relationship,” and that he’d “take all the time necessary, but not more, in order to do so.”

Carney has also vowed to reset the defence and security partnership with the U.S. as he tries to strengthen ties with other European and Asian partners. He’s said he will increase Canadian defence spending to hit the NATO target of two per cent of gross domestic product by 2030, ahead of Justin Trudeau’s previously set schedule. Trump, however, wants NATO allies to spend five per cent of GDP on defence.

Premier Doug Ford has urged Carney to hit the two per cent defence spending target faster, to drop the digital services tax which hits U.S.-based tech giants and remains a persistent irritant to Trump, and to work on a broader energy and critical mineral strategy with the Trump administration.

The Ontario official said the Americans “do not have the critical minerals they need to power their economy. I think that’s a real opportunity — whether it’s critical minerals, potash, oil and gas — to really emphasize Canada’s strategic offering,” and finally be heard in a way Canada wasn’t before “because of the baggage of the Trudeau-Trump relationship.”

In a letter Monday to Carney, Ford pledged to work with the federal government and other provinces to make Canada more resilient to Trump’s threats.

He vowed to help Carney build new “energy corridors for pipelines, rail lines, transmission lines and other critical infrastructure necessary to get Canadian resources and energy to new and established refineries, as well as to new tidewater and, beyond it, new markets.”

That will boost the Canadian economy and “significantly reduce the existential risk and threat” of any intervention by the United States, either at the state or federal level” in a long-running legal dispute over the Line 5 pipeline that carries oil and natural gas liquids from Michigan to Sarnia for refining. Ford said it’s critical “to ensure we’re able to power our future no matter what.”

And Ford set out a marker that, as the Carney government works toward a “renewed security and economic partnership, Ontario expects frequent, ongoing and meaningful engagement by the federal government with all provinces and territories at all stages to ensure our core interests are reflected in any outcome.”

Public Safety Minister David McGuinty, International Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly are accompanying Carney on the Washington trip, but no minister briefed reporters on Carney’s goals or strategy for the meeting.

That is deliberate, to lower the temperature.

Carney’s team says it is not going in to renegotiate the Canada-United States-Mexico trade agreement in this first meeting. Instead, the prime minister is going into the talks with the expectation that “anything can happen, positive or negative,” said one federal official, whom the Star agreed not to identify, and who declined to discuss the trip further.

That, says the Ontario official, is smart. Carney should not go in “dug in that we are right on all of these things and they are wrong, and then screw themselves,” they said.

“That will only lead to more tension and more conflict.”