The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, will express the case of Canada against harmful prices with the new American secretary of state in Washington next week, after the President Donald Trump Repeated a request Thursday So that the allies considerably increase their military spending.
Trump threatens to impose 25% of prices between imports from imports from Canada from February 1. Joly said things were still evolving because Trump did not confirm his new secretary to trade.
“There will be many rhetorics,” Joly told journalists on the Hill Parliament on Thursday.
“We will hear a lot of different versions from the south of the border. We have to lower our heads, we have to be united and we have to defend Canadian jobs. »»
Joly spoke with American Secretary of State Marco Rubio for half an hour by phone on Wednesday and will meet him in person next week. She said Rubio is a “good interlocutor” and that she had “constructive” discussions with him, including when they met last December before his formal confirmation.
“He understands that not only will this have an impact on the Americans, but it will have an impact on how the United States is committed to the world, and it will have a geopolitically impact,” she said in reference to the tariff threat.
“I also talked about the importance of resisting China together. And Rubio himself was very fellowly against China. »»
Joly said that she will meet “other key republican senators” during her fifth visit to the United States since the presidential election last November. She said Canada will participate in Trump’s planned examination on business practices.
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She called to the unit on Canada’s commercial strategy. The Prime Ministers of Alberta, Quebec and Saskatchewan have pushed Ottawa for floating the idea of imposing reprisals on a dollar for the dollar and cutting energy exports.
“Alberta jobs are important as Emplois in Ontario, such as Quebec jobs. This is not a competition, ”said Joly.
“We can all work together to make sure that, in the end, we are faced with this existential threat against our economy.”
Also Thursday, Trump repeated his former calls to NATO military allies like Canada to spend five percent of their GDP in defense – a target that no NATO country is currently reaching.
He then expressed doubts about the participation of us in the alliance itself.
“I’m not sure that we should spend anything, but we should certainly help them,” Trump told journalists after signing several decrees in the oval office. “We protect them. They don’t protect us.
Rubio spoke on Wednesday to NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte and strengthened the American commitment to the Alliance, the US State Department announced on Thursday.
The two also discussed the “real sharing of the burden” with regard to NATO funding as well as the importance of ending the Russian war against Ukraine, the ministry said in a statement.
In his speech at the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump also deplored the “huge deficits of the United States with Canada” in the trade.
“Canada has been very difficult to manage over the years, and it’s not fair,” he said, adding that the United States does not need Canadian products.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded by quoting Ottawa’s expected increase in military spending and said Canada is a partner in the United States in an unstable world.
Canada has long missed NATO’s goal, spending less than 1.4% of GDP for defense last year. Updating the government’s defense policy establishes a 2030 calendar to reach 1.76%.
Trudeau promised to reach 2% by 2032, but the parliamentary budget officer raised doubts as to this plan is possible.
“We will continue to work with our NATO partners to make sure that we do everything you need to ensure Canada’s safety,” the Prime Minister said on Thursday.
Liberal deputy Yvan Baker told journalists outside the Caucus on Thursday that he wanted Canada’s defense expenses to be “much higher than it is currently”, but S ‘S’ would not engage in five percent or any other number.
“I think we should be greater than two percent,” he said.
The Minister of the Interior Trade, Anita Anand, who previously was Minister of Defense, told journalists that the government “would certainly consider” Trump’s remarks and currently examines how Canada can accelerate its investments and purchases of defense .
Karina Gould, head of the government’s chamber and the liberal management candidate, also said that Canada should spend more in defense, but stressed that US expenses are also less than 5%. The United States spent 3.38% of its GDP for defense last year.
Trudeau said Trump’s vision for an economic boom in the United States will require “more things that Canada already sends”, like energy, minerals and wood – all Ottawa could block or make more expensive in response to American prices.
“Canada will have a solid and robust response, because we don’t want to, but we will answer if necessary,” said Trudeau.
He said that the interest of Canada’s pricing strategy is “not to understand how to manage these prices and live with them in the long term, but to understand how to delete them as quickly as possible.”
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press