The Decibel - Key takeaways from Carney’s second meeting with Trump

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Five months after his first appearance in the Oval Office, Prime Minister Mark Carney made his second trip down to Washington. And while he said little during the 30-minute press conference, talks between the countries carried on throughout the day and into the night.Doug Saunders, The Globe’s international affairs columnist, assesses Carney’s second performance at the White House and explains why he thinks Carney might be stalling on making a trade deal.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Prime Minister Mark Carney made his second trip to Washington yesterday. And he went in with a specific message on trade. There are areas where we compete, and it's in those areas where we have to come to an agreement that works. But there are more areas where we are stronger together, and that's what we're focused on. And we're going to get the right deal. Right deal for America, right deal, right deal, obviously, from my perspective, for Canada. meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump comes as a review of our continental free trade deal, the USMCA, is underway. Trump is now starting to suggest he may be more interested in separate

deals with Canada and Mexico rather than just one. But as of late Tuesday, there was no formal deal announced on any of the American tariffs against steel, aluminum, autos, and other Canadian goods. However, both sides agreed to keep talking into the evening. Today, Doug Steele, Saunders is our guest. He's the Globe's International Affairs columnist. He'll assess how Carney did in the Oval Office and explain why stalling on a trade deal might be the best option. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Doug. Thanks so much for joining us tonight from Berlin. I know it's really late there. So thank you so much for coming on the show. Hi, Cheryl. Pleasure to be with you. So we're talking around 5.30 p.m.

Eastern on Tuesday, which is 11.30 p.m. in Berlin. And earlier in the day, Trump and Carney met at the White House and took reporters' questions for about half an hour ahead of a working lunch. I just want to start with your overall view of this meeting. Like, top level, what did you think? Well, we've become used to these spectacles of the Oval Office meetings between Canadian prime ministers and President Trump. And on one hand, Prime Minister Carney, he's developed a reputation for handling these fairly well, for not getting humiliated, for pushing back a bit against the more extreme claims of the president and so on. But these meetings are a humiliating spectacle. I mean, they do require Canadian prime ministers to sort of nod their heads or stand

stonily silent. Yeah, I noticed that a lot in this meeting, right? Like, Carney was very quiet a lot of the time. I think he spoke for a total of two minutes of the meeting when the reporters were there. You could just see the self-control being exercised to keep a poker face while the president said patently offensive or false things over and over again. And I think for a lot of Canadians, the question is why, you know, what was the purpose of this meeting? There has been pressure from a lot of people for the last several months for Prime Minister Carney to try to negotiate a trade deal that would reduce the tariffs that President Trump has rather arbitrarily imposed. And there's some looking jealously at the European Union or Britain or South Korea or these other places that have struck deals. And I think some people

think, why is he doing this if he's not coming out of it with a deal like that? And I actually think he's either playing a larger game or he's just fortunate that he doesn't have one of those deals now. If he's playing a larger game, then he's stalling the president for time until something better can happen, which won't happen this year. So if that's the case, then I think we should consider ourselves lucky that we're not striking one of those quick and ready casual deals with President Trump. And on trade, there was some interesting language coming from both Carney and Trump. One of the main messages from Trump today was that there are areas of, quote, natural conflict between Canada and the U.S.

over some trade issues, like auto and steel. The problem we have is that they want a car company and I want a car company, meaning the U.S. wants a car company. And they want steel and we want steel. So in other countries, they're very far away. and there's no problem. You can compete and you can do. We don't like to compete because we sort of hurt each other when we compete. And so we have a natural conflict.

It's a natural business conflict. Nothing wrong with it. And Carney did push back and said it wasn't conflict but competition. What do you make of these two battling narratives? In a way, I think the prime minister is trying to make himself sound different from the president. The president continues to have this deletive. idea that having a trade deficit with the country means that you're losing to them or something because they're selling you stuff at a lower price than your own stuff and your

consumers are giving them money, which is a little bit like saying that if you're buying groceries at your supermarket, giving them money in exchange for groceries that somehow you're losing. In a way, Prime Minister Carney is meeting President Trump halfway on this because really the word he should be using is not competition or war. or, but it's really cooperation in this case. I mean, a lot of this trade, when he talks about automobiles, I mean, this goes back to the Auto Pact in 1965, where Canada and the U.S. had a system set up

where some components could be made in Canada and the U.S., some in the U.S., and eventually some in Mexico. This is not something that can easily be changed. And President Trump's idea that steep tariffs could suddenly cause all automobile manufacturing to move back to the United States. That's not going to happen. And partly that's not going to happen because the states where they make a lot of cars are at kind of full employment right now.

And you would need to move not only the car plants, but you'd need to move all of the parts plants because they need to be located within a few kilometers of the car plants now. And so you'd need tens of thousands of jobs at the very moment when President Trump is preventing people from entering the United States so that they can't expand their labor force. So none of that's really going to happen. And I don't think anyone would want it to happen.

So it's part of a little game that the prime minister is playing with the president and going along with some of his more absurd things, but qualifying them a little bit so they sound more appealing. And also, I should say, being careful not to actually commit to anything formally. It's interesting to say cooperation might be like strategically a little bit too far for Carney. But, you know, competition is kind of that middle ground. Yeah, it's what he can say safely. And, you know, I mean, in a way we are competitors.

For sure, our steel industries compete with each other. If the United States wanted to depend only on its own steel, it probably could. It's a pretty big market. But because it's a heavy commodity and tends to like to be produced close to its markets, it means that some parts of the United States would lose out and would be paying a lot more for steel, including their automobile manufacturers. So most of the things he's talking about would be very painful for American consumers

and ordinary people if they were implemented. So this is the second time that Carney visited the Oval Office. How has his approach to managing Trump in public changed between these two visits? I think he's staying consistent with this. He's trying to strike a balance between being chummy and agreeable and challenging Trump on things that Canadians won't tolerate. So once again, we had some pushback on the president's semi-joking claims that he wants

to annex Canada and turn it into the so-called 51st state, which he's brought up at every one of his meetings. Now, he doesn't call Prime Minister Carney the governor of the 51st state the way he did Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And when he brings these things up, he tends to say. say I'm joking. Do you think he is? I feel like in this moment, it sounded like in this meeting, Trump kind of brought it up as a joke. Unprecedented commitments of NATO partners to defense spending. Peace from India, Pakistan, through to Azerbaijan, Armenia, disabling Iran as a force

of terror. And now, and I'm running out of time, but this is many respects the most important. The merger of Canada and the United States. I'm not like that. I wasn't where it was going. I would know, but I, you know, on this. Is it a joke? Like, is this the end of the talk to run annexation in a serious way? If you're the most powerful country in the world and every time you bring up a country, you talk about annexing it or challenging its sovereignty, then it can only be a joke to a certain point. And this is one of the differences of perspective.

I think American observers do think, okay, this is just a joke he does. It's like the nicknames he has for every politician. Not realizing that to Canadians, it's not. not very funny. I mean, it's, it's a power move. It's at the very least, it's a conversational tactic to belittle and humiliate Canada. And there's a sense that even if he doesn't have designs on our sovereignty, he's trying to soften us up for something. And it helps Prime Minister Carney in a way because it means that the moments when he is going along with Mr. and nodding and agreeing to things that no Canadian should agree to,

he can get away with that a little bit with Canadian audiences because he's also pushing back on the sovereignty stuff. But, I mean, Prime Minister Carney was not strictly pushing back. He was agreeing to things that it probably wouldn't be wise for Canadians to agree to, like saying that we want to participate in President Trump's Golden Dome, you know, Star Wars type missile defense system. There's no military expert in Canada who thinks that Canada should have any part in that in a formal way. And Minister of Trade Dominic LeBlanc was very clear after the meeting to clear up that Canada has made no commitments to this

and that this is not something that we're formally agreeing to do. Yeah, and also our colleague, for each a note here that our colleague, Stephen Chase, you know, really pushed Dominic LeBlanc to give us an answer on that. He was in the press conference after. United States. But have we signed on to the Golden Dome? I just, I don't have an answer to that question. The president said that we are discussing with the Americans how to participate in that idea. The prime minister... Were you surprised that the defense issues weren't talked about more in this meeting, Doug? Well, I think in the meeting they probably were. And... You mean the closed-door

meeting? In the actual closed-door meetings. And in fact, when we start talking about the larger meanings of that meeting and what's going on with these meetings that don't produce results. I think one of the things that we need to discuss is that most of these trade and security agreements, as they're being called, certainly the ones with the European Union and with Britain, the tariff reduction stuff often is sort of the bait and switch. It's not the thing that they're really going for. Certainly British officials have been very clear that in, negotiating their deal with Trump, their main purpose was not to get tariffs reduced because

they weren't reduced very much. I mean, Britain still pays 25% on a lot of, a lot of things after their deal. But it was to keep Mr. Trump on side on cooperation with NATO, with Ukrainian defense, with things like that, to prevent him from pulling out of providing arms for Ukraine, even if Europe has to pay for them, to prevent him from. pulling out of NATO. And I think it's quite possible that Prime Minister Carney's overarching motives may have more to do with security cooperation than with trade per se, particularly because if he's being strategic, he really wants to stall for time until we renegotiate the USMCA, the NAFTA replacement deal, which will happen next year. And we'll be the real action as far as

tariff-related negotiations. You mentioned pushback in the meetings. And, you know, something I noticed in the meeting was Carney kind of looking up at the ceiling a number of times, trying to maybe choose his moment when to jump in. But he didn't push back on some things. For example, there was a time when Trump said that the U.S. gave, quote, everything to Canada and Carney kind of stayed silent there. I'm just wondering, do these moments of silence, does that ultimately hurt Carney?

So there are two things that could hurt him. being silent when the president says outrageous things because he knows that if he challenged the president on them it could go very badly and then agreeing to certain things. So Carney was silent when the president, for example, said that Canada charges 401% tariffs on some things, which is certainly not true.

He was silent when, you know, he said incredibly offensive things about fellow politicians and so on. He, in passing, said that a Democratic Congresswoman was a low IQ figure and things like this and the prime minister sort of stared at his shoes you're not going to have a moment

in a diplomatic meeting like that where our prime minister is going to say sir you're being grotesque and offensive and so on after Donald Trump made the ridiculous assertions about fentanyl flooding across the Canadian border which has never been the case

his response was we're tightening the border referring to, you know, the various border security bills that have passed almost certainly entirely as sort of a policy Potemkin village to make Canada look like it's doing something for these negotiations with President Trump. So this was not just a show of strength and resistance by Prime Minister Carney. There were aspects of sort of genuflection to President Trump and paying favor to President Trump, which has been part of, of all of these negotiations by the European Union and Britain and South Korea and so on. The difference is that Prime Minister Carney has stopped short of actually doing the things you'd need to do to strike a deal of that sort. We'll be right back.

Hey, decibel listeners, we're proud to announce that this show has been nominated for a Signal Award, which recognizes podcasts that define culture, the entire decibel team. is very excited. But none of this could be possible without you. You can help us win in our category of best editing. Just head to vote.signalward.com and then head to best editing to vote. That's vote.signalward.com. The deadline for votes is this Thursday. Thanks so much for all your support. It really does mean the world to us at the decibel. What do you make of Trump's impression of Carney? Because he did pay him quite a number of compliments in the meeting saying he's very strong, a very good leader. But he also called him

nasty at one point. I think he's a great prime minister. I mean, he could represent me any time. I will tell you. I'm not saying that. No, he is very strong, very good leader. He's a nice man, but he could be nasty. He could be very nasty. Maybe as nasty as anybody. How? I think, I think Canada, let me put it this way. I can tell you this, because they deal with lots of leaders all over the world. He is a world-class leader. He's a man that knows what he wants. And I'm not surprised to see that he won the election and won it substantially. And I would think he's more popular now. He's a good man. He does a great job. And he's a tough negotiator. Good man does a great job, tough negotiator. What do you make of that, Doug?

Well, it's better to have President Trump treating Prime Minister Carney that. That, way in sort of glowing terms, then to have him treating him the way he treated Ukrainian President Zelensky, you know, and basically throwing him out of the room and telling him he should put on a suit. You want to keep up good diplomatic relations. There's certainly one argument to me made that President Trump has passed any line of acceptability and democratic decency and nobody should do business with him. But that's not a position that Canadians can take. our economy is so intertwined with the United States and there are no replacements for it in terms of trade that at least trying to have cordial diplomatic relations with a figure like Donald Trump is sort of a humiliating necessity.

It's interesting that he called him nasty. That's a word that we've previously heard him use. Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris. It tends to be women he uses that word on. and he tends to use it as a very dismissive and insulting term. He seems to use it differently for men. That's all I'd say.

And, you know, he seemed to be using it in a pro wrestling sort of sense. Doug, I'm just wondering, like, you know, with Trump complimenting Carney so much, there's this whole narrative of Carney with his elbows up. Does this not go against this image of elbows up for Carney? Well, yes, of course it does. except that Carney is pulling short of actually making one of those deals. Is the fact that months after other countries struck so-called tariff reduction deals with President Trump, a sign of failure?

Or is he talking to those leaders and looking over his shoulders at what's happened and realizing that the real failure is when you make one of those deals? And the European Union had to invest billions, essentially paying tribute to the president and to do all sorts of other humiliating things in terms of policy commitments and so on in order to get a tiny tariff reduction that still was much more tariffs than they had paid at any point in recent history. Britain had to do quite a few really humiliating things, including having a dinner with the king, in order to get hardly any tariff reduction. And not only that, but those deals haven't really held together. New tariffs were just imposed on Britain, you know, this week. The bigger tariff reductions have not really been negotiated. The European ones seem to be being trampled over by new tariffs that he introduces every week.

And not only that, but we're within a few weeks of all of those deals possibly falling apart. Because what's going to happen starting November 5th is the United States. state Supreme Court, but will be doing its ruling on the legality of all of Trump's tariffs. And regardless which way it decides when in December or January, February, or whenever it makes its ruling, the Supreme Court decision will probably cause most of those tariff reduction deals to go out the window. If they rule that it's illegal for him to be imposing tariffs on the grounds that it's an emergency, then all of those deals are null and void, because because none of the tariff levels mean anything.

And President Trump will possibly just impose arbitrary new tariffs based on some other premise. But if the Supreme Court rules that the president does indeed have the unlimited right to impose tariffs arbitrarily, then also those deals will very likely fall apart because he will probably decide to just willy-nilly impose new tariffs now that he has no restrictions and so on. So Prime Minister Carney is probably aware of

this. So I think it's fair to say that he's stalling for time, you know, and that it's in Canada's best interest to stall for time, even if we're having to pay some painful tariffs on some things for the moment. That's a really interesting context there. So there's no deal as of right now for Canada. But around 4 p.m. Eastern time, Dominic LeBlanc, who's the Minister for Canada-U.S. trade, made an announcement saying there was momentum for quick deals, possibly later tonight or tomorrow. With the President and the Prime Minister directing us, me and my colleagues and the President, his cabinet secretaries who were there, Ambassador Greer, Secretary Lutnik and others, to continue

the conversation and to quickly land deals that will bring, we think, greater certainty in areas where the principal areas would be steel and aluminum and energy. So I guess I'm wondering, Doug, how should Kearney deal with managing the public's expectations going forward? The wisest thing for the prime minister at this point would be to try to get one-time reductions on specific tariffs that are hurting. President Trump has imposed arbitrary tariffs on a number of things and probably most painfully steel and aluminum. They're hurting large sectors. So it would definitely be in the prime minister's interest. to try to negotiate a one-time reduction in those tariffs.

Getting individual painful tariffs dealt with, getting individual defense procurement and defense cooperation, I think is a wiser approach than attempting to bundle these things together in a comprehensive deal, which would require quid pro quos and, you know, Canadian promises to invest in the United States and so on. So we'll see what does come out of this, But I think in a way that best we can hope for is not a big deal, but is smaller items that will benefit Canadians and reduce some of the pain that our economy is only just starting to feel.

So just to sum up, Carney went to Washington, spoke for just over two minutes total during this media scrum, had a working lunch behind closed doors, and there appears to be no change to our trade disputes with the U.S., at least right now. I imagine some people might be wondering what the point of all of this was. What is your final takeaway, Doug? We don't have a final conclusion to this yet. At the point I'm talking to you, talks are still continuing overnight. And even when they officially end, I don't think the process is going to be over. So this is not like the negotiations of NAFTA or the free trade agreement where hundreds of lawyers are involved and they go on for months.

and you reach a deal that everyone agrees to and ratifies. We're talking about agreements that are for the moment, that are transitory, and most importantly, that will continue going on. If there's one thing we've learned this year, and to a lesser extent in his first term, is there is no point when trade and tariff negotiations with Donald Trump are over. Some of these deals only last weeks after they've been negotiated. They do not have treaties behind them.

They're more like handshake deals in back rooms. And they can be changed in an instant if the president decides to go on his social media platform and declare that there's some new tariff on something, just like the tariff he arbitrarily imposed just this week on large and medium trucks entering the United States. states, which if it happens, would be quite harmful to a number of Canadian employers. So I think Canadians need to stop waiting for a big deal that'll put a period on the end of the sentence and end the conversation. What we saw in the Oval Office today is going to be part of an ongoing process, often quite humiliating, often one step forward and two steps back, that will

probably continue throughout Mr. Trump's presidency. Doug, thank you so much for making the time. It was great to be talking with you tonight. Thank you. That was Doug Saunders, the Globe's International Affairs columnist. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you soon.