Rob Gillies
Associated Press

TORONTO – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Donald Trump that Americans would also suffer if the president-elect goes ahead with his plan to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian products, a Canadian minister who recently attended their dinner said Monday.

Trump threatened to impose tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico if they did not stop what he called the flow of drugs and migrants across their borders with the United States. Last week, he said on social media that he would impose a 25 percent tax on all products imported into the U.S. from Canada and Mexico as one of his first executive orders.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, whose portfolio includes border security, attended a dinner with Trump and Trudeau at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club on Friday.

Trudeau had requested the meeting to avoid the tariffs by convincing Trump that the northern border had nothing to do with the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

“The Prime Minister has of course talked about the importance of protecting the Canadian economy and Canadian workers from tariffs, but we have also spoken to our American friends about the negative impact that these tariffs are having on their economy and also on affordability in the United States,” LeBlanc said in Parliament.

If Trump makes good on his threat to impose 25 percent tariffs on everything imported from Mexico and Canada, the resulting price increases will clash with his campaign promise to give American families a break from inflation.

Economists say companies would have little choice but to pass on the extra costs, causing prices of food, clothing, cars, alcohol and other goods to rise sharply.

The Produce Distributors Association, a Washington trade group, said last week that the tariffs would raise prices for fresh fruits and vegetables and hurt U.S. farmers if countries retaliated.

Canada is already examining possible retaliatory tariffs on certain items from the US if Trump carries out his threat.

After his dinner with Trump, Trudeau returned home with no assurances that the president-elect would back away from threatening tariffs on all products from America’s major trading partner. Trump called the talks “productive” but indicated he would not back down from his promise that Canada is unfairly lumped in with Mexico over the flow of drugs and migrants to the United States.

“The idea that we came back empty-handed is completely false,” LeBlanc said. “We had a very productive discussion with Mr. Trump and his future Cabinet secretaries. … Mr. Trump’s commitment to continue working with us was anything but empty.”

Trump and Trudeau were joined at the dinner by Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick to head the Interior Department, and Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security adviser.

Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., Kirsten Hillman, told The Associated Press on Sunday that “the message that our border is so different from the Mexican border was really understood.” Hillman, who was seated at the table next to Trudeau and Trump, said Canada is not the problem when it comes to drugs and migrants.

On Monday, Mexico’s president rejected those comments.

“Mexico must be respected, especially by its trading partners,” said President Claudia Sheinbaum. She said Canada has its own problems with fentanyl use and “could only wish it had the cultural richness of Mexico.”

The migration flows and drug seizures at the border of both countries are very different. U.S. customs officials seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border last fiscal year, compared to 21,100 pounds at the Mexican border.

Most of the fentanyl that enters the United States — where it causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually — is manufactured by Mexican drug cartels using precursor chemicals smuggled from Asia.

In the area of ​​immigration, the US Border Patrol reported 1.53 million encounters with migrants at the southwest border with Mexico between October 2023 and September 2024. This compares to 23,721 encounters at the Canadian border during this period.

Canada is the top export destination for 36 US states. Nearly 3.6 billion Canadian dollars ($2.7 billion) worth of goods and services cross the border every day. About 60 percent of U.S. crude oil imports come from Canada, as do 85 percent of U.S. electricity imports.

Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the United States and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon desperately needs and is investing in for national security.