The Ben Mulroney Show - The Diplomatic implications of the meeting between Mark Carney and Donald Trump

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

The Diplomatic implications of the meeting between Mark Carney and Donald Trump Guest: David MacNaughton, former Canadian ambassador to the US (2016–2019) Guest: Gordon Giffin, Former US Ambassador to Canada (1997-2001) If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get 50% off lens upgrades in the Specsavers Spring Sale. Hey, I can upgrade my kids! You chill, Mom. I'll load the dishwasher. Awesome! Exclusions apply. See Specsavers.ca for details. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us. I guess it's hump day. Happy hump day to everybody. And congratulations to our Prime Minister for not getting Zelensky in Washington for his first face to face with Donald Trump. It was, I think, a productive meeting. I think there's a lot to like about it. I've said before,

I want him to succeed because we as a nation need a positive relationship with our largest trading partner. That's just a fact. And you do not have to be a liberal to be cheering him on in that arena. We're going to break it down in a number of ways today. But let's just start with some of the highlights, where it started with, I mean, it really did start with a bromance, right? Here's Donald Trump saying, actually, this is him congratulating himself on helping get Mark Carney elected. Thank you very much, everybody.

It's a great honor to have Prime Minister Mark Carney with us. elected. And he ended up winning, so I really want to congratulate him. Probably one of the greatest comebacks in the history of politics. Maybe even greater than mine. And look, we were promised by Mark Carney that these conversations would happen between two people who respected their nation's national sovereignty. He didn't quite deliver on that promise because more than once Donald Trump brought up that Canada would be a beautiful 51st state. Now Mark Carney to his credit pushed back and I think had a line that will be remembered for a very long time where he told Mark Carney, no uncertain terms that Canada is not for sale.

Mark Harney, no uncertain terms that Canada is not for sale. As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale. That's true. We're sitting in one right now, you know, Buckingham Palace, you visited as well. That's true. And having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign last several months, it's not for sale, won't be for sale ever. But the opportunity is in the partnership and what we can build together.

We have done that in the past. And part of that, as the President just said, is with respect to our own security. And my government is committed for a step change in our investment in Canadian security and our partnership. I must say Canada is stepping up the military participation because Mark knew, you know, they were low and now they're stepping it up and that's a very important thing. But never say never. Never say never.

Never say never. Yes, that's exactly what we're saying, Mr. President. It's never going to happen. But people who have done a deep dive into his book, The Art of the Deal, are going on social media saying, this is chapter and verse from his book. This is how he negotiates. So I take it as par for the course. Carney did reiterate that his views that the 51st state will never change to discuss the auto sector. This is not necessarily a one day deal. This is over a period of time they have to make that decision.

Yes, go ahead. Yeah, if I may. Well, I respectfully, Canadians view on this and is not going to change on the 51st state. Secondly, we are the largest client of the United States in the totality of all the goods. So we are the largest client of the United States. We have a tremendous auto sector between the two of us and the changes that may have been helpful. You know, 50% of a car that comes from Canada is American. That's not like anywhere else in the world.

And to your question about is there one thing, no, this is a bigger discussion. There are much bigger forces involved and this will take some time and some discussions and that's why we're here. And yeah, and listen, I appreciate all of that. Everything he said and he's right, this nothing was going, no one was gonna hit a grand slam

and come out of yesterday with a renegotiated NAFTA 2.0 and now NAFTA 3.0 that's that wasn't gonna happen he level set in a very responsible way he did a lot of things that needed to happen and one of the things that needed to happen was he needed to not be Justin Trudeau and he wasn't and therefore we got a lot of the positive effusive reaction from Donald Trump. The only person who's Donald who's Justin Trudeau is Justin Trudeau. So anybody I think who won this election, whether it had been Mark Carney or Pierre Poliev, would have received a warm welcome yesterday. But then, as is typical with Donald Trump, he started saying a few things that aren't true. On top of the fact that Canada could be the 51st state

because that could never happen, he said that he talked about how much business America does with Canada and it was just flat out wrong. Well, we don't do much business with Canada from our standpoint. They do a lot of business with us. We're at like 4% and usually those things don't last very long. You know, we have great things, great product, the kind of product we sell nobody else can sell, including military.

Look, we make the best military equipment in the world and Canada buys our military equipment, which we appreciate. Yeah, so Canada is the US's top exporter in terms of its goods at $349 billion a year. That's above Mexico. It's more than double China, for example. UK is not even in the picture. It's at $80 billion. So yeah, it's a pretty big market for you. And he says 4%.

Daniel Dale on CNN said it was closer to 17%. And you know, he went into that trade deficit that $200 billion, Daniel Dale said, it's not 200 billion, it would be closer to 34 billion. And that doesn't factor in services, you're only talking about goods. When you factor in the service economy and how much we buy from the United States in terms of services, you have a trade surplus. So it's a it's a it's a nonsense claim, not a lot of pushback from from our prime minister. However, I will say this, that I don't know that that was the place to do the pushing back.

You he showed up and did what he had to do to hopefully lay the groundwork so that they can have honest conversations behind closed doors. And who knows what's happening behind closed doors. I'm giving the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt. I do, however, take issue with the fact that one of the reasons he won the election was because he was beating the drum that Canada need to be on a war footing that they're coming for us. They want us. They want everything we got here. They want our water. They want our natural resources.

They want to take us over. They want to weaken us so they can own us. And I'm sorry, if that's how you get elected, then as you, the way you presented yourself in this first meeting, that doesn't do it for me. I'm sorry, if that's how you get elected, then the way you presented yourself in this first meeting, that doesn't do it for me. I'm sorry, it doesn't. The way he presented himself in this meeting was what he accused Pierre Poliev of what he was gonna do had he gotten elected.

He said, Pierre Poliev is just like Donald Trump, and he's gonna show up and he's gonna kiss the ring and he's gonna bow and he's gonna get on his knees for this guy. Now, call me crazy, I got eyes and I got ears. That's what I saw Mark Carney do. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with that. That's what you have to do with this guy. You have to flatter the king.

You have to kiss the ring. That's what you do in public with Donald Trump. Otherwise, he would have got Zelensky. Otherwise he would have been asked how many times have you said thank you and who the heck do you think you are? We've come to your aid so much blah blah blah. JD Vance would have been let off the leash and he would have come from Mark Carney's throat. So of course he has to do this but the context of the election I cannot get away from. The context of the election tells me that Mark Carney pulled a bait and switch. Mark Carney told us one thing on the election trail and then presented as

completely different in the in the Oval Office. Once he got the keys to 24 Sussex, and yes I can see nobody lives there anymore, but once he got the keys to 24 Sussex he became the very guy he said Pierre Poliev was gonna be. And then what happens is you've got the the supporters of Mark Carney who are going to come back and they're going to say, well, there's only one way to deal with this man. There's only what you have to do this. And I concede that point, except that's not how he got elected. That's not why he got elected.

We were told he came back because he knows how to deal with crises. He wouldn't be here if Canada was not in a crisis. I am a breed apart. I am different. I am made different. So then to do exactly what anybody else in that situation would have done is not why you got elected. Again, and I'll take it right back to the point, that being said, a very good meeting. I don't know if that's good or bad. I shouldn't say that. That might hurt you. And a cue for your hospitality and above all for your leadership. You're a transformational president, the focus on the economy with a relentless focus on the American worker. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show and that was just a clip of Donald Trump and Mark Carney

essentially showering each other with compliments of you've heard my opinions. I've got a lot of good to say about that meeting. I've got some criticisms as well. But let's bring two people into this conversation with far more depth of knowledge. When they speak, you should listen. Please welcome to the show David McNaughton, former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. as well as Gordon Giffin, former US ambassador to Canada. To both of my ambassadors, I say welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Good to be here. So let's, Ambassador Giffin, let's start with you. There were moments when both of these men were very complimentary to each other. Is that what you would have expected? I know we

take it for granted that that's what usually happens. But it's been a really interesting few months. Was that par for the course? No, I don't think you can expect anything with President Trump. I mean, every, every day is a new day and anything could happen. So actually, I thought the meeting, certainly the one we saw in public yesterday, was much better than I expected. And I think, frankly, that it evidences that Donald Trump has a respect for Mark Carney and that he's gained that respect by observing Prime Minister Carney over the recent weeks and months but also because of Prime Minister

Carney's resume and life experiences, the fact that he's not just a career politician that he started out as an investment banker, and of course, most recently was at Brookfield. So I think the most important takeaway for me was that there was evidence of a respect for Canada's prime minister. And Ambassador McNaughton, you were appointed and you worked under Justin Trudeau. The simple fact, I think, that Mark Carney is not Justin Trudeau

got him pretty far down the road in terms of the respect that was afforded to him by Donald Trump. That was not a positive relationship between the two men. And Donald Trump made it pretty clear that he didn't like Justin Trudeau or Christopher Ylain. Let's take a listen to that one. We have the USMCA is a good deal for everybody. I won't say this about Mark, but I didn't like his predecessor. I didn't like a person that worked. She was terrible. Actually, she was a terrible person. And she really hurt that deal very badly because she tried to take advantage of the deal and she didn't get away with it. You know what I'm talking about. But so you know, I had a we had a bad we had a bad relationship having to do with the fact that we disagreed with the way they viewed the deal.

And we ended it, you know, we ended that that relationship pretty much. Ambassador McNaughton, it feels to me when I hear that, that we are living in a time where personality, and maybe it's been like this forever, but the personality in these diplomatic exchanges is as important as it's ever been. Yeah, I think that's fair. I mean, I think it does, you know, if there's tension in the room, if there's personal hostility, it makes it more difficult. The only thing I would suggest is that it's extremely helpful to set off a very positive first step, which is, I think, what Prime Minister Carney did with Donald Trump yesterday. That gets you sort of to the table and talking

in a reasonably rational way. But we got a long way to go yet. I mean, it's not the personal relationships matter, but they don't get you the deal. And that's what I, that's the unknown here, right? What we saw yesterday, Ambassador Giffin, was the performance, the pageantry, but the nuts and bolts of the work that needs to happen is gonna happen behind closed doors. Talk to me about what those meetings might be like.

After this meeting, when they go and they close the doors and the cameras aren't there, what sorts of conversations are happening? How much of a tonal shift are we talking about? I think there's a substantial tonal shift and whether it's fair or not, whether President Trump should have been as dismissive of Prime Minister Trudeau as he was, was, I don't agree with, but it was the case. In this set of circumstances, what I think has occurred, and we'll see, as David has suggested, you know, that was only the first opportunity for them to gain ground, but I watched up close and personally the relationship between Bill Clinton and Jean Chrétien, and the chemistry between those two leaders made

a huge difference in how we worked together as two countries. And you're very familiar with what chemistry meant during the period of time that your father was Prime Minister. It was a significant part of how the two countries work together. And I get the sense and the reporting is, and some friends of mine have told me the same thing, that in the private meetings, President Trump was inquisitive and asked Prime Minister Carney a lot of questions beyond the Canada-U.S. relationship about his global views on important questions. And I will tell you, there is no doubt in my mind that the secret sauce in the relationship between Canada and the United States over the decades has been our partnership globally.

Yeah. Not just what we sell to each other. And frankly, I've said for all the time I've been involved with Canada, too much time is spent by the press talking about the trading relationship and not enough time about the value of our global partnership and if Donald Trump now believes that Mark Carney is a global partner and someone he can talk with rely on as former presidents have on former prime ministers then that's the secret sauce and we will make progress as a result of that. Well see that's the secret sauce, and we will make progress as a result of that.

Well, see, that's a really interesting point, Ambassador Giffin. And Ambassador McNaughton, if you can maybe move the ball down the field on that, I mean, if Donald Trump is in fact, I'm a smitten, it's probably a good word, by Mark Carney and sort of his resume and his connections and his worldview and the fact that Canada can have certain conversations with certain leaders that the Americans can't, I mean, that could present a real opportunity for Canada

to yet again go to a place where we're punching above our weight, we're that middle power, we're that honest broker. I mean, that could be a really interesting opportunity for us. Yeah, well, I think Gordon's absolutely right. And, you know, the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, we do have a trade deal

with the United States. And, you know, President Trump said, it wasn't done under Biden, it wasn't done under any previous president, it was done under Donald Trump. And yet, he is using things like 232, which suggests that Canadian steel and aluminum imports are a national security threat, or AEPA that says that it's fentanyl coming in. I think if we can establish the kind of relationship that you're talking

about, whereby we are, he sees Canada and we are allies in defense and security and in sort of defending North America's position in the world and helping the United States in terms of its international dealings, then I think that the rationale for using those clauses that go around Congress disappear. And that's really the key to this because we've got a trade deal. And so trying to reopen KUSMA, well, it doesn't make any sense if he's still going to use AEPA and 232. So I think that is the key. I think that the relationship, you know, if Gordon's right, I hope we can make progress on that front and see this as an ally. Ambassadors, I want to thank you so much.

An incredibly insightful conversation. You've actually made me reconsider everything I thought about that meeting because the potential upside for what could come next is immense. So thank you to the both of you.