Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly will press Canada’s case against damaging tariffs with the new U.S. secretary of state in Washington next week, after U.S. President Donald Trump repeated a demand Thursday for allies to vastly increase their military spending.
Trump is threatening to impose 25 per cent across-the-board tariffs on imports from Canada starting on Feb. 1. Joly said things are still in flux because Trump hasn’t confirmed his new commerce secretary.
“There will be lots of rhetoric,” Joly told reporters on Parliament Hill on Thursday.
“We will hear a lot of different versions coming from south of the border. We need to put our head down, we need to be united and we need to defend Canadian jobs.”
Joly spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for half an hour by phone Wednesday and will meet with him in person next week. She said Rubio is a “good interlocutor” and she’s had “constructive” discussions with him, including when they met last December before his formal confirmation.
“He understands that not only this will have an impact on Americans, but this will have an impact on how the U.S. engages in the world, and that will have an impact geopolitically,” she said in reference to the tariff threat.
“I also talked about the importance of standing up against China together. And Rubio himself has been very hawkish against China.”
Joly said she will meet with “other key Republican senators” during her fifth visit to the U.S. since last November’s presidential election. She said Canada will participate in Trump’s planned review of trading practices.
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She called for unity on Canada’s trade strategy. The premiers of Alberta, Quebec and Saskatchewan have pushed back on Ottawa for floating the idea of imposing dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs and cutting off energy exports.
“Alberta jobs are important as Ontario jobs, as Quebec jobs. It’s not a competition,” Joly said.
“We can all work together to make sure that, ultimately, we face together this existential threat against our economy.”
Also on Thursday, Trump repeated his previous calls for NATO military allies like Canada to spend five per cent of their GDP on defence — a target that no NATO country currently meets.
He later expressed doubts about U.S. involvement in the alliance itself.
“I’m not sure we should be spending anything, but we should certainly be helping them,” Trump told reporters after signing several executive orders in the Oval Office. “We’re protecting them. They’re not protecting us.”
Rubio spoke to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Wednesday and reinforced the U.S. commitment to the alliance, the U.S. State Department said on Thursday.
The two also discussed “real burden sharing” when it came to funding NATO as well as the importance of ending Russia’s war against Ukraine, the department said in a statement.
In his speech to the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Trump also lamented the United States’ “tremendous deficit with Canada” in trade.
“Canada has been very tough to deal with over the years, and it’s not fair,” he said, adding that the U.S. doesn’t need Canadian commodities.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded by citing Ottawa’s planned increases to military spending and said Canada is a partner to the U.S. in an unstable world.
Canada has long missed the NATO target, spending less than 1.4 per cent of GDP on defence last year. The government’s defence policy update sets a 2030 timeline to reach 1.76 per cent.
Trudeau has promised to reach two per cent by 2032, but the parliamentary budget officer has raised doubts about whether that plan is feasible.
“We’re going to continue to work with our NATO partners to make sure we’re doing everything necessary to keep Canada safe,” the prime minister said Thursday.
Liberal MP Yvan Baker told reporters outside Thursday’s caucus meeting that he wants Canada’s defence spending to be “much higher than it currently is,” but wouldn’t commit to five per cent or any other number.
“I believe we should be higher than two per cent,” he said.
Interior Trade Minister Anita Anand, who previously served as defence minister, told reporters the government will “definitely be considering” Trump’s remarks and is currently looking at how Canada can speed up its defence investments and procurement.
Government House Leader and Liberal leadership candidate Karina Gould also said Canada should spend more on defence but pointed out America’s spending is also below five per cent currently. The U.S. spent 3.38 per cent of its GDP on defence last year.
Trudeau said Trump’s vision for an economic boom in the U.S. will require “more of the things that Canada is already sending” it, such as energy, minerals and lumber — all of which Ottawa could block or make more expensive in response to U.S. tariffs.
“Canada will have a strong, robust response, because we don’t want this, but we will respond if necessary,” Trudeau said.
He said the point of Canada’s tariff strategy is “not to figure out how to manage these tariffs and live with them over the long term, but to figure out how to get them removed as quickly as possible.”
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