KUALA LUMPUR: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Monday he was ready to talk with US President Donald Trump after Washington hiked tariffs on Canadian goods by an additional 10 percent.
“We stand ready to sit down with the United States, myself with the president, my colleagues with their colleagues, when the US is ready to sit down,” Carney told reporters, after Trump said he had terminated all trade talks with Canada over what he called a “fake” advertisement campaign.
Carney was speaking on the sidelines of a regional summit in Malaysia, which Trump attended, before leaving earlier on Monday for Japan.
Carney said he had not had any contact with the US president in Kuala Lumpur.
Trump says he won’t meet with Canada ‘for a while,’
But he added that he had agreed to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, with both men due at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea on Wednesday.
Carney said talks with Xi would include their “commercial relationship, as well as the evolution of the global system”.
Trump is also expected to attend the same APEC dinner, although the US president has said he had no plans to meet Carney.
Trump’s global sectoral tariffs – particularly on steel, aluminium, and automobiles – have hit Canada hard, forcing job losses and squeezing businesses.
“We had made considerable progress on a supplement to the trading relationship that we had,” Carney added, referring to US trade talks, including “considerable progress in the areas of steel, aluminium, and energy-associated areas as well”.
The ad from the Canadian province of Ontario used quotes from a radio address on trade that US president Ronald Reagan delivered in 1987, in which he warned against the ramifications that he said high tariffs on imports could have on the US economy.
It cited the Republican icon as saying “high tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars”, a quote that matches a transcript of his speech on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s website.
The Ronald Reagan foundation wrote on X on Thursday that the Ontario government had used “selective audio and video” and that it was reviewing its legal options.
Ontario said it would pull the offending anti-tariff ad on Monday so that negotiations could restart.
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