Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has declined an invitation to visit the White House this week to celebrate a new free trade agreement in North America, amid worsening coronavirus numbers in the United States and persistent tensions with Donald Trump.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will meet Trump in Washington on Wednesday, urging Trudeau to attend the meeting.
But in a statement Monday, Trudeau’s office said: “We wish the best for the United States and Mexico at Wednesday’s meeting. While there have been recent discussions about Canada’s possible involvement, the prime minister will be in Ottawa this week for scheduled cabinet meetings and the long-planned parliament session. “
Last week, however, the prime minister had cited threats of new aluminum and steel rates as a potential factor in his decision.
“Obviously we are concerned about the proposed issue of the aluminum and steel tariffs that Americans have recently brought up,” Trudeau told reporters.
US officials raised national security concerns when they imposed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from Canada and Mexico during negotiations for the North American trade pact last year, which went into effect on July 1. The tariffs, long a source of frustration for Canadian negotiators, were seen as a repudiation of the historically close relationship between the two countries.
Had he accepted the invitation, the visit would have marked the first meeting between the two leaders, as new details of Trump’s aversion to Trudeau emerged in a new book by former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton.
In one case, after Trudeau expressed frustration at the US tariffs, Trump allegedly told his aides to “attack” the prime minister.
“Trump’s leadership [to senior economic adviser Larry Kudlow] it was clear: just go after Trudeau. Don’t hit others. Trudeau is a ‘guy behind your back,’ ”Bolton writes in The Room Where It Happened.
Shortly after, White House aide Peter Navarro appeared on television and said there was a “special place in hell” for Trudeau because of the way he treated Trump.
In addition to a politically fragile relationship with the president, Trudeau had cited concerns about the “health situation and the reality of the coronavirus that still affects all three countries” as another factor in his decision.
With the outbreak getting worse in the US, More than 80% of Canadians say the shared border, which was temporarily closed in March, should remain off-limits for travelers, according to a new Nanos Research survey / The Globe and Mail.
The United States recorded more than 52,000 new cases of the virus on Sunday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as officials try to mitigate major viral outbreaks in the country’s southern and western regions. There are an estimated 2.9 million cases registered, with more than 1.5 million active cases.
Meanwhile, Canada on Sunday reported 226 new coronavirus cases and nearly 28,000 active cases, and health officials cautiously expressed optimism that the country had exceeded its peak.
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