Before Prime Minister Mark Carney headed off on his weeklong trip to Asia, a meeting with President Trump was on his agenda. That meeting didn’t happen. Instead, Mr. Carney returns on Saturday after an unexpected meeting with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader.
The change of plans was yet another example of how upside-down international diplomacy has become during Mr. Trump’s second term.
Just before Mr. Carney’s tour began, Mr. Trump had cut off trade talks with Canada and threatened to increase tariffs by 10 percent. In doing so, he pointed to a TV ad paid for by Ontario that featured a Ronald Reagan speech that criticized tariffs.
At a time when Canada’s relations with the United States are at one of their lowest points, Mr. Carney made his whirlwind trip to Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea with one overarching goal: to increase Canada’s exports to countries other than the U.S.
[Read: Scolded by Trump, Canada’s Prime Minister Turns to Asia for Trade]
[Read: How Canada Is Dealing With Its Latest Tussle With President Trump]
[Read: Trump Announces Tariff Increase on Canada Over Reagan Ad Spat]
Just having an apparently cordial meeting with Mr. Xi was a significant result for Mr. Carney. A series of events well known to Canadians meant that it was the first time in eight years that the top leaders of China and Canada had sat down for a formal meeting.
Unlike Mr. Trump after his meeting with Mr. Xi in South Korea on Thursday, Mr. Carney didn’t emerge from the Friday meeting with any big announcements, but he did say that he had accepted an invitation to hold further talks in Beijing.
And as I wrote this week, there are still hurdles to overcome if Canada and China are going to renew their relationship.
[Read: Canada’s Other Superpower Problem]
I’ve been traveling with Mr. Carney on his excursion. Here are some casual observations from the last days of the trip:
Our final stop on the tour was Gyeongju, South Korea, which has a population of about 240,000 and, as Choe Sang-Hun, The Times’s Seoul bureau chief, writes, lacks the infrastructure that is usually required for major meetings, like an international airport and sufficient accommodations.
[Read: South Korea’s Hosting Anxiety: A City Rich in History but Not Hotel Rooms]
As evidence of the airport problem, we arrived in Gyeongju after a flight of nearly seven hours from Singapore, landing on the military side of the airport in Busan, South Korea. (Which, I learned thanks to this trip, is the center of the country’s film industry.) We then drove for two more hours to Gyeongju.
In Gyeongju, we’ve been staying in a hotel built around a water park that is populated by a variety of oversize Korean cartoon characters. Like many hotels in the area, it was renovated to include rooms fit for visiting leaders and to update its entranceway and some meeting rooms.
One thing I’ve noticed on this tour is Mr. Carney’s unrelenting commitment to a more formal dress code. Justin Trudeau frequently toured around as prime minister without a tie, keeping his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up. But on this trip, Mr. Carney stuck with tailored dark suits and black dress shoes, which he wore even in the oppressive heat of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, and Singapore.
The only thing Mr. Carney changed in his style was putting on a hard hat and a pair of work gloves to descend down a hatch of a submarine during a visit to a town-size shipyard with 31,000 workers that hopes to sell a dozen of the vessels to Canada as part of the prime minister’s program to greatly expand military spending.
Like all politicians, Mr. Carney recycles lines from previous speeches, particularly when he speaks to audiences outside Canada.
But I heard Mr. Carney go off script once this week while welcoming business people and investors to a reception sponsored by Canada in Kuala Lumpur, which was hosting the Association of South East Asian Nations summit meeting.
First, he took a humorous shot at Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier and the man behind the TV ad that riled up Mr. Trump.
[Read: New Trump-Canada Spat Spotlights ‘Captain Canada,’ the Ontario Premier]
After referring to Mr. Ford as a “good friend,” Mr. Carney paused and asked: “Did I say ‘good friend’ Premier Ford? I said the always-entertaining — no — the always-interesting, the unpredictable president — Premier Ford. Sorry, I don’t know why I mixed the two up — ‘president’ and Premier Ford. Is that on, by the way?”
He finished his remarks by jokingly suggesting that he was going to lead the audience in a karaoke performance of the ASEAN anthem.
At that point, the cameras were ushered out of the room, so it’s unknown if he followed through.
Trans Canada
This section was compiled by Vjosa Isai, a reporter based in Toronto.
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Matina Stevis-Gridneff, The Times’s Canada bureau chief, traveled to Fort Simpson in the Northwest Territories, among the Far North destinations that draw thousands of visitors to take in the aurora borealis. A new play tells the lights’ tales from the perspective of Indigenous creators, she writes.
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Calgary has long clashed over the return of fluoride to its drinking water. While fluoridation resumed in June, the battle remains as polarized as ever.
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The Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers will face off one final time, on Saturday, for Game 7 of the World Series. The Jays fell 3-1 to the Dodgers on Friday. The Series began against a backdrop of political tensions, but the national mood was ecstatic, writes Shawna Richer.
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From Opinion: Douglas A. Irwin, an economist who worked on the staff of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, says the Canadians are right about Reagan and free trade.
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Ken Maracle, a member of the Cayuga Nation, offers a glimpse at the art of making wampum belts.
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Mireille Silcoff, a cultural critic who lives Montreal, tells how she rescued her daughter from the cult of Labubu.
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Canadians are noticeably absent from Western New York.
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times. A Windsor, Ontario, native now based in Ottawa, he has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
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Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times. A Windsor, Ontario, native now based in Ottawa, he has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
The post Spurned by Trump, Carney Begins Thawing Canada’s China Connection appeared first on New York Times.
