Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump will have a brief meeting Friday at the Kennedy Center, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Carney will also meet – separately – with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, CTV News confirmed via the Mexican embassy in Canada. Sheinbaum will also meet privately with the U.S. president.
The three leaders will be in Washington for the FIFA World Cup draw on Friday, which will determine the tournament’s composition between their countries.
The prime minister said days ago that he was expecting to see his U.S. counterpart at the event. There was no explicit mention of a formal meeting at that time. Rather, Carney simply predicted he would “see the president around there.”
Carney and Trump spoke sometime between Nov. 25 and 26, but the conversation “wasn’t newsworthy,” the prime minister told reporters.
The two nations remain in a tariff trade war. Negotiations to end it were abruptly halted in October when Trump took issue with an ad spot produced by Ontario’s government. The ad, which ran in the U.S. during the World Series, featured former president Ronald Reagan and criticized tariffs.
Carney has since apologized and said Canada was ready to restart talks whenever the White House returns to the table. U.S. ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has expressed doubt a deal will be reached before the new year.
Carney travelled to Mexico City in September to meet with Sheinbaum. The two leaders promised to strengthen relations with each other in the face of Trump’s tariffs.
Trade turmoil
Meanwhile, hearings continue in Washington on the upcoming review of the three countries’ free trade agreement.
The hearings are being held in preparation for a renegotiation period mandated to occur six years after the deal was struck in 2020. With less than a year remaining until then, Trump appeared lofty on his plans to maintain a strong trilateral agreement.
“It expires in about a year. And we’ll either let it expire, or we’ll maybe work out another deal with Mexico and Canada,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
According to the deal, the agreement terminates after 16 years, though a country may withdraw from the deal with six months’ notice.
Canada and Mexico have been largely spared from the full impact of Trump’s tariffs, which do not apply to goods covered by the agreement.
