Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has stated that he had a "good call" with President-elect Donald Trump after the incoming US leader announced that he will impose a 25 percent tariff on goods coming from Canada when he takes office.
"I had a good call with Donald Trump last night again," Trudeau said in an address to reporters on Tuesday according to BBC.
We obviously spoke to setting the facts straight, talking about how the strong and vibrant links between our two countries are interdependent," he said.
"We spoke to some of the challenges we can address together," he added.
"This is something we can do - setting the facts straight and going forward in constructive ways," Trudeau said.
Trudeau signaled a sense of optimism in working with Trump even though the Canadian official acknowledged that the relationship between the two countries takes work, BBC reported.
"This is a relationship that we know takes a certain amount of working on, and that's what we'll do," Trudeau told reporters on Tuesday.
He and Trump talked on the phone on Monday evening, following the President-elect's announcement on the proposed tariffs in a post on Truth Social.
Trump's tariff proposal has been causing concerns for Canadian officials. Premier Doug Ford of the province of Ontario called it "devastating.".
Trump also said that he will apply a similar tariff to Mexico and an additional 10 per cent to goods that come from China.
Trudeau tried to calm the Canadians down and met with leaders of the Canadian provinces and territories on Wednesday to come up with the way forward.
The 10-minute conversation was a "good conversation," according to a Canadian official who spoke with the BBC.
The two leaders discussed trade and border security, the official said, pointing out to Trudeau that the number of migrants crossing the Canadian border is much smaller in comparison to the US-Mexico border.
Trudeau added that he immediately called up Ford, the premier of Ontario, to set a meeting for the Prime Minister with the Canadian premiers.
Canadian Ministers stressed that their work on the shared border is where they placed the "highest priority" — as they made clear in a public statement.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc also made clear in their statement how important the US-Canada trading partnership is. According to them, 60 percent of last year's U.S. crude oil imports came from Canada.
America's northern neighbor accounted for some $437 billion (£347 billion) of US imports in 2022 and was the largest market for US exports in the same year, according to US data.
The 25 per cent tariff on goods from Canada would be signed straight after he took office on January 20, 2025, Trump said on Monday.
He described the move as an effort to get the three other countries to toughen up on the illegal flow to the US of people and drugs, specifically fentanyl.
Canada's Industry Minister Francois Philippe Champagne noted on Tuesday that the tariffs will have a serious effect on the US economy, and particularly the price of energy for Americans.
It noted the proposed tariff on electric vehicles would be "devastating to workers and jobs in both Canada and the US".
It demanded "that the government takes this situation at our border seriously."
The premiers of Quebec and British Columbia said basically the same thing as Ontario, while a posting from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to the X account acknowledged Trump's "valid concerns related to illegal activities at our shared border".
The Canadian American Business Council, however, said "we strongly oppose" the proposed tariff, which the council said would undermine a North American trade agreement between Canada, the US, and Mexico that was renegotiated under Trump's first term.
The move, according to the statement from the CABC would "harm businesses on both sides of the border and erode the economic and geopolitical strength of North America.".
Tariff hikes trumpeted by Trump on the election trail may be a negotiating tactic, it has been previously said by the man selected by US President-elect to be his new US Treasury secretary.
Trump's new border tsar Tom Homan has described the northern border as an "extreme national security vulnerability". He has also claimed that Canada is being used as a pathway to enter the US by people from countries deemed to sponsor terrorism.
Illegal crossings from Canada to the US are far outnumbered by the number that take place from Mexico, another country targeted by Trump's planned tariffs. But there appears to have been a surge.
One recent high-profile trial in the US shed light on smuggling operations that help foreign nationals move to North America unlawfully.
A jury in the US state of Minnesota found two men guilty of helping bring an Indian family from Canada to the US in January 2022, which led to their deaths.
Canada's Immigration Minister Mark Miller said on Tuesday that the US and Canada have a shared interest in making sure the border is "manageable and controlled".
He added Canada is reviewing a plethora of proposals, from deploying more staff to increasing the number of border patrol agents.
Read also| India's Domestic Air Traffic Grows 5.3% to 1.36 Crore in October
Read also| Centre Approves PAN 2.0 Project Worth Rs 1,435 Crore to Overhaul Taxpayer System
