Carney heads to Washington, D.C. ahead of Trump meeting: PMO

Prime Minister Mark Carney travelled to Washington, D.C., on Monday ahead of his highly anticipated meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Prime Minister’s Office confirmed to Global News in an email that Carney will depart for the U.S. capital on Monday afternoon. The meeting with Trump is scheduled to take place Tuesday at the White House.

“I’m not sure what he wants to see me about, but I guess he wants to make a deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday when asked what he expected from the meeting.

Global News has learned Carney was due to meet with Canadian and American business leaders Monday evening at an event in Washington hosted by the Business Council of Canada. Carney was not expected to deliver remarks at the event.

Carney’s meeting Tuesday comes after Trump, in a Sunday interview on NBC’s Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, said annexing Canada with military action is “highly unlikely,” a point of contention that could come up in the meeting.

Trump took centre stage and became a major factor for voters in the recent federal election that ended with voters re-electing the Liberals to their fourth term.

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The prime minister and president’s meeting comes as renegotiations of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement on free trade (CUSMA) are expected to begin next year, though Trump’s tariffs on both countries have raised questions about how those talks will go.

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Carney, in his first comments Friday following the election, said it was “important to distinguish want from reality,” adding that the upcoming talks would be difficult.

“I’m not pretending those discussions will be easy,” he said. “They won’t proceed in a straight line. There will be zigs and zags, ups and downs. But as I said in my remarks, I will fight for the best deal for Canada and only accept the best deal for Canada and take as much time as necessary.”

Prior to the election, Carney had told reporters following his first international trip as prime minister that Trump’s continued threats to make Canada a U.S. state “need to stop” before his government would sit down for talks on an updated trade pact.

For much of the election, Trump did not bring up the 51st state rhetoric, however, it resurfaced in the week before election day with the president telling Canadians in a post on the day people went to the polls to vote for a leader who would lower taxes, increase military might and eradicate tariffs. He did not name a specific candidate.

— With files from Global News’ Sean Boynton and David Akin, and The Canadian Press