Two weeks before proposed 50 percent tariffs take effect, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney turned President Trump’s rhetoric back on him, calling trade talks with the U.S. “nasty.”
“Yes, this is a tough negotiation,” Mr. Carney said to reporters in a mix of French and English on Thursday after laughing in response to a question about Mr. Trump’s repeated use of the word “nasty” during a speech. “We can change the adjective. You can say ‘nasty.’ But I mean, this is a question of Canadian jobs. It’s a question of the future of Canadian businesses.”
Mr. Trump repeatedly called Canadians nasty in a speech in Las Vegas on Wednesday after claiming that Canada and other countries had long been unfairly using tariffs against the United States.
“Canada’s nasty. They are. They’re nasty,” Mr. Trump said. “I love the people, but they’re nasty. Nasty leadership.”
The indirect exchange about nastiness between the two leaders comes at a perilous economic time for Canada. After refusing to extend the free trade deal between the United States, Canada and Mexico for another 16 years, Mr. Trump signed an order last month to impose 50 percent tariffs on a wide variety of Canadian products worth about $20 billion.
Mr. Trump said that he would impose those tariffs in part because Canada had earlier retaliated against U.S. tariffs of up to 50 percent on Canadian steel, aluminum and automobiles.
Despite the president’s views on Canada, Mr. Carney said that he was in regular contact with Mr. Trump.
“It’s easy for me to speak with Mr. Trump if necessary,” Mr. Carney said in French. “Last week, for example, we had a conversation and we will surely have other conversations when it’s necessary.”
While the United States has not scheduled formal trade talks with Canada as it has with Mexico, Dominic LeBlanc, the Canadian minister responsible for trade with the United States, and Janice Charette, the chief trade negotiator for Canada, met on Thursday afternoon in Washington with Jamieson Greer, the United States’ trade representative. The session followed a similar meeting last week.
In a social media post, Mr. LeBlanc described the meeting as “constructive and detailed” but offered no details. Mr. LeBlanc’s office said that the meeting had run an hour longer than its scheduled 30 minutes.
Mr. Carney said on Thursday that Canada would not make trade deals that covered only specific issues with the United States.
“We’re not interested in a very targeted deal,” he said. “We’re interested in a more comprehensive deal, more global deal.”
He added: “Will we get all that by the 19th of August? We’ll see. But we want to have pathways in order to get that.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Carney took a poke at Mr. Trump when his teleprompter broke down during a speech.
“I would like to inform you that the teleprompter has ceased to function,” Mr. Carney said “Unlike a certain world leader, I do not view this as a conspiracy.”
In September, Mr. Trump’s teleprompter failed while he was speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, an incident that led to allegations that staff at the organization had set out to sabotage him.
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