Transcript of Trump and Canada PM Mark Carney Meeting – May 6, 2025

You know, we’re going to be starting to possibly renegotiate that if it’s even necessary. I don’t know that it’s necessary anymore. But it served a very good purpose. And the biggest purpose it served is we got rid of NAFTA. NAFTA was a very unfair deal for the United States. A very, very terrible deal. It should have never been made. It was made many years ago, but it should have never been made.

REPORTER: Mr. President, will you see a first trade deal between Canada and the United States? Would you like to see a first trade deal between Canada and the United States?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I would love that. Look, I have a lot of respect for this man. And I watched him come up, in a sense, through the ranks when he wasn’t given much of a chance and he ran a really great campaign. He did a really great debate. I think that debate was very helpful. I was going to raise my hand. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I shouldn’t say that. That might hurt you. But, no, he ran a really great election, I thought. And, yeah, something could happen. Something could happen. Yeah, please.

REPORTER: What’s the top concession you want out of Canada?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Concession? Friendship. No, just — I just — we’re going to be friends. We’re going to be friends with Canada. Regardless of anything, we’re going to be friends with Canada. Canada is a very special place to me. I know so many people that live in Canada. My parents had relatives that lived in Canada, my mother in particular. And, no, I love Canada. A lot of — I have a lot of respect for the Canadians.

Wayne Gretzky. I mean, how good — the great one. You happen to have a very, very good hockey player right here on the Capitals, who I have a lot of respect for. Whatever he is, he is a big, tough cookie, too. He just broke the record. And he’s a great guy. And, you know, we had the — we had the team here, and I got to know a lot of the players. But now, Canada is a very special place. Yeah, please.

REPORTER: Mr. President — and, Mr. Prime Minister, I’d like to get your response to this, too. But, Mr. President, you have said that Canada should become the 51st state for US.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, no. Well, I still believe that. But, you know, it takes two to tango, right? But, no, I do. I mean, I believe it would be a massive tax cut for the Canadian citizens. You get free military, you get tremendous medical cares and other things. There would be a lot of advantages, but it would be — it would be a massive tax cut. And it’s also a beautiful — you know, as a real estate developer

PRESIDENT TRUMP: —you know, I’m a real estate developer at heart. When you get rid of that artificially drawn line — somebody drew that line many years ago with, like, a ruler — just a straight line right across the top of the country. When you look at that beautiful formation, when it’s together — I’m a very artistic person, but when I looked at that, you know, I said, that’s the way it was meant to be. But, you know, it — I guess I do feel it’s much better for Canada. But we’re not going to be discussing that unless somebody wants to discuss it. I think that there are tremendous benefits to the Canadian citizens. Tremendously lower taxes. Free military, which, honestly, we give you essentially anyway because we’re protecting Canada, if you ever had a problem. But I think it — you know, it’s — it would really be a wonderful marriage because it’s two places that get along very well. They like each other a lot.

PRIME MINISTER CARNEY: Well, if I may — as you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: That’s true.

PRIME MINISTER CARNEY: We’re sitting in one right now — you know, Buckingham Palace that you visited as well.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: That’s true.

PRIME MINISTER CARNEY: 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. And 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 — and I’ll say this as well — that the President has revitalized international security, revitalized NATO, and us playing our full weight in NATO. And that will be part of it.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: That’s true. And they have —

REPORTER: Mr. President, you never talked about Mexico.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: They have — 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.

REPORTER: Why? Why? Why? Why don’t you ever talk about Mexico?

Discussing Trade and Security

REPORTER: Mr. President, you were saying that — what would it take to get the tariffs off of Canada?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, we’ll be talking about different things. You know, we want to protect our automobile business, and so does Mark. But we want to protect — we want to make the automobiles. And we want to — you know, we have a tremendous abundance of energy, more than any country. We have — just in Alaska alone, ANWR has been reopened now. ANWR is probably the largest find anywhere in the world. They say it’s larger than Saudi Arabia. I don’t know, but it’s a lot. But we have tremendous amounts of energy. Other countries don’t. We’re both lucky in that way. They have energy, we have energy. We have more than we could ever use, and more than we could ever sell, actually. And you have the same thing. So, we’re two countries that are very lucky. If you look at China, they don’t have that. You know, it’s a big disadvantage. Other countries — most countries don’t have. You know, most countries don’t have that. So, Canada and us, we have a lot of advantages over other places.

REPORTER: When you consider what Mr. Carney just said, that Canada is not for sale, does this make the discussion a little more difficult to start on?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, not at all. No, not at all. No, time. Time will tell. It’s only time. But I say, never say never. I’ve had many, many things that were not doable, and they ended up being doable. And only doable in a very friendly way. But if it’s to everybody’s benefit — you know, Canada loves us, and we love Canada. That’s, I think, the number-one thing that’s important. But we’ll see. I mean, over time, we’ll see what happens.

U.S.-China Relations

REPORTER: Mr. President, I was hoping you could clarify something. Earlier this morning, Capitol Hill Secretary Bessent said that there had been no negotiations yet for China. You have said something different.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: They want to meet, and they’re doing no business right now. And those ships are turning around in the Pacific Ocean. Big turn. Those are big ships. Those ships take about 10 miles to turn. And, you know, we lost a trillion dollars to China on trade because of an incompetent President that we had, who preceded me. Grossly incompetent. You’re finding it out more and more now. And by not trading, we’re losing nothing. So we’re saving a trillion dollars. It’s a lot. But they want to negotiate, and they want to have a meeting. And we’ll be meeting with them at the right time. I have not met with them.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Of course, you would know if I met. I’d tell you they want to meet. But, you know, we are right now — look, they’re suffering greatly. Their economy is suffering greatly because they’re not doing trade with the U.S. And they made most of their money off the U.S. Don’t kid yourself. They don’t make the money off other countries like this. And they were making — we had a trade imbalance. We had a deficit, or they had a surplus — another way of saying it — of more than a trillion dollars. Think of it. More than a trillion dollars.

The Impact of Tariffs on Trade

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And because of 145 percent — that’s the only reason — but because of — they have now 145 percent tariff. There’s no trading. You can’t trade with 145 percent. We are, therefore, making, in a certain way, I guess, $1.1 trillion. In other words, we’re not losing $1.1 trillion. Our deficit is much better. When I started, I said we were losing billions of dollars a day on trade. That’s rapidly turning around. We looked at numbers this morning.

So, we were losing — the United States, during Biden, was losing more than — I won’t even give you numbers because they’re so embarrassing. But billions of dollars a day on trade. Those numbers are rapidly turning between the tariffs. Don’t forget, we’re now getting 25 percent on cars, 25 percent on aluminum, 25 percent on steel. And maybe, more importantly, massive numbers of companies are moving into the United States. Honda. We have tremendous — the car companies are moving in at levels we’ve never seen before.

The biggest investment ever made in the United States is being made right now. Trillions of dollars. I would say we could be at nine. Nine trillion dollars. You could go back to other Presidents. They haven’t had $1 trillion for their entire term. Look at Biden. He had bad numbers. People are leaving. They weren’t coming in. They were leaving with Biden. And he didn’t know the difference. The only thing he knew is people coming in. You know who they were? Illegal immigrants. Okay? From prisons, from mental institutions, from all sorts of places that weren’t good. From gangs, from Venezuela. They were coming in, and there were criminals and murderers — 11,888 people that murdered, and at least half — have murdered more than one person. This is what Biden led into our country.

I’m bringing in big companies. We have — Apple is investing $500 billion. We have Jensen, as you know, who’s going to be 500 — biggest chipmaker — or chipthinker, I call him. He’s really a thinker more than a maker. But we also have the maker, Mr. Wei. I get to know him all in the last — it was a cram course. But they’re all moving into America because of the tariffs and the — I don’t think people have appreciated it. Some people do. Some of the smart people do.

So we have more money coming in. It’s truly an amazing thing. We have more money being invested in the United States now than at any time ever before in our history, and it’s not even close. And I think the real number could be 9 or 10 trillion. We don’t know everybody that’s doing it. We have many — I just heard about a plant that’s being built right now — a very, very top-of-the-line company. And they didn’t come to the White House. They’re just doing it because they’re making it because if they build here, there are no tariffs. And this is the big market. This is the market. That sets us apart from it. This is the market where everyone wants to be. Now, if I didn’t come here and do this, all of a sudden we wouldn’t be

PRESIDENT TRUMP: …the market where everyone wants to be. So we’re able to do it in time. But we’re going to have a great announcement. And I’m not necessarily saying it’s on trade. Going to the beginning, we’re going to have a great announcement over the next few days, an announcement that will be so incredible, so positive. And I’m not saying — I don’t want you to think it’s necessarily on trade.

Just to finish, we also have a situation — because everyone says, “When? When? When are you going to sign deals?” We don’t have to sign deals. We could sign 25 deals right now, Howard, if we wanted. We don’t have to sign deals. They have to sign deals with us. They want a piece of our market. We don’t want a piece of their market. We don’t care about their market. They want a piece of our market.

So we can just sit down — and I’ll do this at some point over the next two weeks — and I’ll sit with Howard and Scott and with our great Vice President, who has done a really good job. We have some good news to report on a lot of fronts. But J.D. will be there, and Marco. And we’re going to sit down, and we’re going to put very fair numbers down. And we’re going to say, “Here’s what this country — what we want.” And congratulations, we have a deal.

And they’ll either say, “Great,” and they’ll start shopping, or they’ll say, “Not good. We’re not going to do it.” And I say, “That’s okay. You don’t have to shop.” Now, we may think, “Well, they have a right. You know, that maybe we were a little bit wrong.” So we’ll adjust it. And then you people will say, “Oh, it’s so chaotic.” No, we’re flexible.

But we’ll sit down, and we’ll, at some point — in some cases, we’ll sign some deals. It’s much less important than what I’m talking about. For the most part, we’re just going to put down a number and say, “This is what you’re going to pay to shop.” And it’s going to be a very fair number. It’ll be a low number. We’re not looking to hurt countries. We want to help countries. We want to be friendly with countries.

But you keep writing about deals, deals. When are we going to sign? When — it’s very simple. We’re going to say, in some cases, we want you to open up your country. In some cases, we want you to drop your tariffs. I mean, India, as an example, has one of the highest tariffs in the world. We’re not going to put up with that. And they’ve agreed already to drop it. They’ll drop it to nothing. They’ve already agreed. They would have never done that for anybody else but me.

So, we’re going to put down some numbers, and we’re going to say, “Our country is open for business.” And they’re going to come in, and they’re going to pay for the privilege of being able to shop in the United States of America. It’s very simple. It’s very simple.

So, I wish they’d keep — you know, stop asking, “How many deals are you signing this week?” Because one day, we’ll come and we’ll give you 100 deals. And they don’t have to sign. All they have to do is say, “Oh, we’ll start sending our ships right now to pick up whatever we want or to bring whatever we want.” It’s very, very simple. And I think my people haven’t made it clear.

We will sign some deals. But much bigger than that is, we’re going to put down the price that people are going to have to pay to shop in the United States. Think of us as a super-luxury store. A store that has the goods. You’re going to come, and you’re going to pay a price. And we’re going to give you a very good price. We’re going to make very good deals. And in some cases, we’ll adjust. But that’s where it is.

And we’ve been ripped off by everybody for 50 years. For 50 years. And we’re just not going to do that anymore. We can’t do that. And we can’t let any country do that to us. We’re just not going to do it anymore.

The Houthi Situation

REPORTER: On the Houthis. Can you tell us a bit more about the deal that you’ve reached with the Houthis?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, it’s not a deal. They’ve said, please don’t bomb us anymore, and we’re not going to attack your ships.

REPORTER: And where did you hear about that?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It doesn’t matter where I hear it. The very good source I could tell you. Very, very good source. Would you say Marco? I would say pretty good. Right, J.D.? A very good source.

They don’t want to be bombed anymore. You know, I sort of thought that would happen.

USMCA Discussion

REPORTER: I’m going to ask you to clarify something you said on USMCA. Are the U.S. prepared to walk away from that pact?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: A what pact?

REPORTER: USMCA.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, no, no, it’s fine. It’s there. It’s good. We use it for certain things. It’s there. 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 for — 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 who 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 relationship, pretty much.

The USMCA is great for all countries. It’s good for all countries. We do have a negotiation coming up over the next year or so to adjust it or terminate it.

PRIME MINISTER CARNEY: Mr. President, I’ll just say — I’ll say a word on USMCA, if I may, Mr. President. It is a basis for a broader negotiation. Some things about it are going to have to change. And part of the way you’ve conducted these tariffs has taken advantage of existing aspects of USMCA. So, it’s going to have to change. There’s other elements that have come, and that’s part of what we’re going to discuss. Right?

Canada-US Trade Relations

REPORTER: During the campaign, Prime Minister Carney talked about the American material. How do you react if Canada decided not to shop in the American store as much as before and decided to partner with other countries?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: 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 percent. 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. But we make the best military equipment in the world by far. The missiles, the submarines, everything. Everything we have is really top-notch. I rebuilt our military during our last term. Stupidly, we gave some away to Afghanistan, which shouldn’t have happened. But that was — I think it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. It was just very incompetent people.

But if you look, the man that’s now the head of our Joint Chiefs, he led the attack on ISIS for me. That’s why he’s the head of the Joint Chiefs. And Razin CainE, he’s the — he was unbelievable. As you know, we defeated ISIS in three weeks. It was supposed to take five years. We did it in three weeks. And he ran the campaign. I said, I like him. But I knew him before. I went to Iraq, and we agreed to a plan, and that was the plan. And as you know, we did it in record time.

So, we have — you know, we have the best — we have the best equipment in the world. We have the best a lot of things. But Canada does a lot more business with us than we do with Canada. Yeah.

Economic Impact of Investments

REPORTER: Mr. President, when do you think the investments that you’ve announced, the trillions, will finally hit economic data this year?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: When you’re saying about the tariffs?

REPORTER: No, no, about the investments that you’ve announced. You’ve announced —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh, it’s hitting right now. Look, they’re already starting AI plans. These are not people that look…

PRESIDENT TRUMP: That’s a good thing. You know, in real estate, you get a site, then you have to look for financing. You have to get your zoning. You know, five years later, you start building. You get a bank, then the bank’s no good. These people have massive amounts of cash.

The CHIPS Act was a ridiculous thing because that doesn’t get them to build. All we did is hand very wealthy companies money. The CHIPS Act, that was done by Biden. Billions — we give them billions of dollars. They don’t even have to do anything with it. And then if you weren’t — if you didn’t have — and I won’t — I don’t want to be a wise guy, but if you didn’t go with the DEI, if you didn’t go with all of the different things — woke — if you weren’t woke, you couldn’t even use the money. You had to have a certain percentage of this and that and that and that. It’s impossible. Impossible to have.

The companies actually complained to me. They said they gave me all this money, but nobody can get these people to do anything.

I mean, look, President Obama — and if he wanted help, I’d give him help because I’m a really good builder and I build on time, on budget. He’s building his library in Chicago. It’s a disaster. And he said something to the effect, I only want DEI, I only want woke. He wants woke people to build it. Well, he got woke people, and they have massive cost overruns. The job is stopped. I don’t know. It’s a disaster.

And I don’t like that happening because I think it’s bad for the presidency that a thing like that should happen. He’s got a library that’s a disaster. And he wanted to be very politically correct, and he didn’t use good, hard, tough, mean construction workers that I love, Marco. I love those construction workers. But he didn’t want construction workers. He wanted people that, like, never did it before. And he’s got a disaster in his hands. Like, millions of dollars. Many millions of dollars over budget. And I would love to help him with it. Or somebody else. I could recommend professionals. But it was not built in a professional manner.

By the way, nor was — nor was, in California, a little train going from San Francisco to Los Angeles that’s being run by Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. Did you ever hear of Gavin Newsom? He has got — that train is the worst cost overrun I’ve ever seen. It’s, like, totally out of control.

So then they said, All right, we won’t go into San Francisco. We’ll stop 25 miles short. And we won’t go into Los Angeles. We’ll stop 25 miles short. It’s hundreds of billions of dollars for this stupid project that should have never been built.

And then they realized that it would have been a lot less costly if we just gave limousine service back and forth and gave it free. They would have saved hundreds of billions of dollars. They have airplanes that go there for one one-hundredth the cost. And they have cars. They have a thing called the highway that goes back and forth that’s not fully utilized. And they got involved with this project.

And Gavin, unfortunately — you know, I always liked Gavin. Had a good relationship with him. I just got him a lot of water. You know, I sent in people to open up that water because he refused to do it. And we just got him a lot of water. If they would have had that water and — if they would have done what I said to do, they wouldn’t have had the fires in Los Angeles. Those fires would have been put out very quickly.

But if you think about it, and you got to take a look at this project — it’s the worst cost overrun I’ve ever seen. I’ve watched a lot of stupid people build a lot of stupid things. But that’s the worst cost overrun I’ve ever seen — what’s happening between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

And you want to ask about that because this government is not going to pay. I told our very great new Secretary of Transportation — he’s doing a good job, Sean Duffy — I said, we’re not going to pay for that thing. They are just — it’s out of control. This is something that — you don’t have things like this. It’s not even conceivable. Like, 30 times over budget. Thirty times. It’s the craziest thing I’ve — and now it’s hundreds of — it was supposed to be a simple train. And I think the media should take a look at it.

And I’d love him to run for President on the other side. You know, I’d love to see that. But I don’t think he’s going to be running because that one project alone — well, that and the fires and a lot of other things pretty much put him out of the race.

USMCA and Tariff Questions

REPORTER: So, Mr. President, what changes would you like to see to the USMCA, or what changes would you like to see?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We’re going to work on some subtle changes, maybe. I don’t even know if we’re going to be dealing with the USMCA. We’re just — we’re dealing more with concepts right now. Look, right now, we’re doing trade. We have trade. They’re paying a tariff on cars and steel and aluminum. And I think we have a baseline of 10 percent or something like that, for the tariffs. But we’re getting along very well.

Right now, going no further, but we have an agreement. We did something with even parts. You want to discuss that, Howard, with respect to Canada, which helps Canada out?

HOWARD: Sure. So, we’ve made an arrangement with car companies that 15 percent of their A, USMCA parts are included, and then 15 percent of foreign parts from the manufactured suggested retail price are not tariffed to help domestic manufacturing really thrive. So, it gave them a chance to be able to build their car parts, factories, if they’re going to — a lot of these companies already have factories, and what they have to do is just fill them out. But they’re able to build them in the United States, so we gave them a pretty substantial period of time. I think —

REPORTER: Just to clarify, Mr. President, is there anything the Prime Minister can say to you today to change your mind on tariffing Canada? Tariffing cars? Tariffing Canada. Is there anything he can say to you in the course of your meetings with him today that would get you to lift tariffs on Canada?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No.

REPORTER: Why not?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It’s the way it is.

PRIME MINISTER CARNEY: Would you respect that?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Sure, I would. But this is not necessarily a one-day deal. This is over a period of time. They have to make that decision.

Yes, go ahead.

PRIME MINISTER CARNEY: Yeah, if I may. Well, I — respectfully, Canadians’ view on this is not going to change on the 51st day. 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 made have been helpful. You know, 50 percent 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, to have those discussions. And that is represented by who’s sitting around the table.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: See, the conflict is — and this is very friendly. We’re not — this is not going to be like we had another little blowup with somebody else. That was a much different — this is a very friendly conversation. But we want to make our own cars. We don’t really want cars from Canada. And we put tariffs on cars from Canada. And at a certain point, it won’t make economic sense for Canada to build those cars.

And we don’t want steel from Canada because we’re making our own steel and we’re having massive steel plants being built right now as we speak. We really don’t want Canadian steel, and we don’t want Canadian aluminum and various other things because we want to be able to do it ourselves. And we — because of, you know, past thinking of people, we have a tremendous deficit with Canada. In other words, they have a surplus with us. And there’s no reason

PRESIDENT TRUMP: For us to be subsidizing Canada. Canada is a place that will have to be able to take care of itself economically. I assume they can. I will tell you that Trudeau, when I spoke to him — I used to call him Governor Trudeau. I think that probably didn’t help his election. But when I spoke to him, I said, so why are we taking your cars? Why are we taking your — we want to make them ourselves.

I mean, I said, and if the price of your cars went up, or if we put a tariff — if we put a tariff on your cars of 25 percent, what would that mean to you? He said, that would mean the end of Canada. He actually said that to me. And I said, that’s a strange answer, but I understand his answer.

But, no, I mean, it’s hard to justify subsidizing Canada to the tune of maybe $200 billion a year. We protect Canada militarily, and we always will. You know, that’s not a money thing. But we always will. But, you know, it’s not fair. But why are we subsidizing Canada $200 billion a year, or whatever the number might be? It’s a very substantial number. And it’s hard for the American taxpayer to say, gee whiz, we love doing that.

Thank you very much. We’re going to have a very — thank you. Thank you very much.

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