New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman on Tuesday said President Donald Trump may not have an endgame with his demands for Canada following his Oval Office meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
“I’m not sure that it’s clear to him what kind of actual, specific outcome he’s looking for, other than one where the U.S. can say we’re on top and somebody else is not,” Haberman told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
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The president — who has entertained annexing Canada and ignited a trade war with America’s northern neighbor — backed down on his 51st U.S. state talk during the meeting as Carney, who became prime minister in March, stressed that his country is “not for sale” and “won’t be for sale, ever.”
Elsewhere in the meeting, Trump argued that there is nothing Carney could say that would convince him to dial down his tariffs on Canadian imports.
“No, just the way it is,” said Trump, who took to his Truth Social platform before the meeting to repeat his false claim that the U.S. was “subsidizing” Canada — the largest purchaser of American goods in 2024 — by $200 billion a year.
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The president also dismissed getting cars, steel, aluminum and “various other things” from Canada because “we want to be able to do it ourself.”
Haberman said the outcome of the Trump administration’s trade negotiations with Canada and other trading partners will simply wind up being “some kind of a framework of a deal.”
“And Trump will say, ‘We won. This is what I wanted,’” she claimed, adding that there won’t be an “actual trade deal” as those “take months and sometimes years to hammer out.”
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“He will take some kind of off-ramps but I don’t think that he knows exactly what he wants to see, other than a headline that says success.”
H/T Mediaite
