President-elect Donald Trump says a surprise meeting with Justin Trudeau at his Florida home was “very productive,” after the prime minister flew down to discuss the growing threat of American tariffs on Canadian goods, the border and national defence.
On Friday evening, Trudeau landed in Florida and travelled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club for a hastily arranged dinner and discussion with the United States’ incoming president that a senior Canadian government source said was successful.
In a post on his social media site, Truth Social, Trump said the meeting between the two had gone well.
“I just had a very productive meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, where we discussed many important topics that will require both Countries to work together to address,” Trump wrote.
He said the two had discussed the illegal fentanyl and the toxic drug overdose crisis, as well as what Trump called “the massive trade deficit” between the United States and Canada.
“I made it very clear that the United States will no longer sit idly by as our Citizens become victims to the scourge of this Drug Epidemic, caused mainly by the Drug Cartels, and Fentanyl pouring in from China,” Trump wrote. “Too much death and hardship!”
A senior Canadian government source told Global News the meeting, which ran from around 7:45 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. went well. The source said the mood was positive, with Trump playing songs from his iPad during the conversation.
The source said that, while no agreements had been made, the pair discussed tariffs, the border, Ukraine and defence issues, including NATO and the G7.
The meeting came at the end of a week which began with Trump promising 25 per cent tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico into the United States. He said those tariffs would only be removed if both countries made changes to their borders, which he claimed were responsible for a flow of illegal drugs and undocumented immigrants.
The threat of tariffs led Trudeau, along with the country’s premiers, to scramble for solutions. The country’s political leaders spent the week showing they were willing to make changes at the Canadian border.
On Friday, the RCMP said it was considering deploying one-quarter of its eastern workforce to operational priority areas, including the border. Several premiers called for the Trudeau government to enhance its police spending and commit more to tackling fentanyl.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he wanted to see more funding and offered Ontario Provincial Police resources to help respond to Trump’s border demand.
“We need action, including more permanent funding for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canada Border Services Agency,” Ford said Wednesday.
Also among the voices was Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who says she is considering creating a provincial border patrol.
The government source also told Global News that Trudeau was ready to beef up border security by buying new helicopters to patrol the skies, which the source said the RCMP has sought for years. That, the prime minister reportedly told Trump on Friday, was a done deal and a meeting will take place next week to put the plan into action, according to national security sources.
As he was leaving his West Palm Beach hotel, Trudeau stopped briefly to answer a reporter’s question about the dinner meeting, saying it was “an excellent conversation.” Trump’s transition team did not respond to questions about what the leaders had discussed.
Trump, during his first term as president, once called Trudeau “weak” and “dishonest,” but it was the prime minister who was the first G7 leader to visit Trump since the Nov. 5 election.
Trudeau had said earlier Friday that he would resolve the tariffs issue by talking to Trump. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said a day earlier after speaking with Trump that she is confident a tariff war with the United States will be averted.
The meeting, the government source said, came after Canada started quietly asking Trump’s team for a meeting following the U.S. presidential election. Initially, the prime minister’s office was told no meetings would take place before inauguration but the source said they kept pushing.
Then, on Monday night, Trudeau and Trump connected and the prime minister suggested meeting in person. The president-elect invited Trudeau to travel to Florida for dinner on Friday, the source said.
— with files from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press