Carney is meeting U.S. senators as trade war pressure mounts
As the clock ticks on the target date for an updated trade deal between Canada and the United States, Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to meet with U.S. senators Monday.
Carney will meet with a bipartisan delegation of senators on Monday, his itinerary said.
That comes as several members of the U.S. Senate have publicly spoken against U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada.
In a press release earlier this month, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Trump’s tariffs have damaged the U.S.’s relations with a vital ally.
“The American people and the overwhelming majority of my colleagues in Congress reject this short-sighted and costly trade war with Canada, which is what I emphasized when I led a bipartisan delegation to Ottawa to meet with Prime Minister Carney earlier this year,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said.
On Tuesday, Carney will join Canada’s premiers, who are gathering in Ontario’s cottage country on Monday, and talk trade.
Last week, Carney told reporters that a trade deal with the U.S. with zero tariffs was unlikely.
“I expect the discussions will intensify between now and the end of the month and we’ll be working hard on that,” Carney said last week.
This is not the first time a group of senators has been in Ottawa to discuss the Canada-U.S. relationship with Carney.
In May, Democrats Shaheen, Tim Kaine, Amy Klobuchar and Peter Welch, and Republican Kevin Cramer were in Ottawa and met with senior members of the Liberal government, including Carney.
The senators urged Canadians to “give us another chance” as Trump’s trade war with Canada intensifies.
“We have to do this stuff together,” Cramer of North Dakota told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired on The West Block.
“We’ll be better at it if we’re friends than if we’re just tolerating one another…. I’m just here (in Ottawa) to say thank you, and then to encourage Canadians to take another look and give us another chance.”
The visit comes as fewer Canadians are choosing to travel to the U.S., with consecutive months of travel declines reported by Statistics Canada.
“Bookings of Canadians to come to Virginia Beach are down significantly, and colleagues of mine in other states are saying the same thing about tourism,” Kaine of Virginia told Stephenson. “So we’re definitely seeing it.
— with files from Global’s Sean Boynton
globalnews
