Former U.S. ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft has a message for Prime Minister Mark Carney ahead of his highly anticipated meeting with the U.S. president: it’s no use trying to compete with Donald Trump.
Carney is set to meet with Trump in Washington on Tuesday amid a protracted trade war and an unmet, self-imposed deadline to reach a security and economic deal.
“Prime Minister Carney, I am certain, understands that he has to come prepared, and he understands that retaliatory tariffs are not the way,” Craft said on Monday during a panel discussion on CTV Power Play with Vassy Kapelos. “You certainly cannot try to compete with President Trump, because you’ll lose.”
During Trump’s first term, Craft was the U.S. ambassador to Canada from 2017 to 2019, and also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Trump from 2019 to 2021.
Canada and the U.S. have been in an ongoing trade war since February, when Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on Canadian goods, claiming they were related to border security. Those were later scaled back to apply only to goods not covered by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
But in the months since, the U.S. president has stacked additional sectoral tariffs on steel and aluminum, copper and autos.
In late August, Carney announced Canada would be dropping many of its counter-tariffs by exempting goods covered by CUSMA.
“You look at the world, I mean, they set their hair on fire when we started initiating these tariffs, and you know, the sky didn’t fall,” Craft insisted to Kapelos. “Actually, what happened were countries were like NATO. Defence spending increased.”
The former diplomat pointed to other countries that have made deals with Trump in the months since the president began rolling out his tariff regime.
“I think that’s important to see that nothing happened negative to these countries,” Craft said. “Actually, it has encouraged them, it has strengthened them, and that it has given them respect with the president, and I think that’s really important.”
Craft also said it’s “absolutely” true that other politicians have said that face-to-face meetings with the president tend to yield more results than over the phone or otherwise.
“I think that’s very important to always be prepared and to come with a package and to be open minded,” she said as a message to Carney ahead of Tuesday’s meeting.
She said in this case “the burden is on Carney” to look at previous deals Trump has made with other countries, and to ask himself: “what concessions have they made?”
“And how has this been a successful outcome for them, and, of course, for the United States?” she added.
Craft made the comments during a panel discussion with David MacNaughton, a former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. who was also in the role during Trump’s first term.
Asked by Kapelos about the stakes for Tuesday’s meeting, MacNaughton urged caution, but said “it’s always useful and important for the prime minister to get together with the president.”
“I think we should be realistic about what the outcome is going to be, although you never know,” MacNaughton said. “The president, he can come up with ideas about deals faster than almost anybody, so you never know.”
He added Carney should push to have steel and aluminum tariffs imposed under Section 232 “either removed or substantially reduced,” arguing Canada is not a national security threat to the United States.
MacNaughton also said that when it comes to tariffs, it’s “important to realise” that a trade deal between Canada and the U.S. is already in place, one that was negotiated and signed during Trump’s first term.
A source speaking on background has told CTV News Canadian officials are “cautiously optimistic” there could be potential movement on steel or aluminum tariffs following Tuesday’s meeting.
Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said he expects Carney to “ask about tariffs” but reiterated that “tariffs are very important for the U.S.”
“Not only do we make hundreds of billions of dollars, we are a peacekeeper because of tariffs,” Trump said.
You can watch former U.S. ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft and former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. David MacNaughton’s full panel discussion in the video player at the top of this article.
