Canadian foreign, finance ministers meet Trumps team on tariffs [Video]

Senior members of Canada’s cabinet held talks Friday with US President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees to lead the departments of commerce and the interior, as Ottawa works to hold off the threat of punishing tariffs.

Canada’s newly-appointed Finance Minister Dominic Leblanc and Foreign Minister Melanie Joly met with Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary nominee, who will also lead the country’s tariff and trade agenda.

Interior secretary nominee Doug Burgum was also at the meeting held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Leblanc’s spokesman Jean-Sebastien Comeau, who confirmed the participants, described the talks as “positive and productive.”

Trump has vowed to impose crippling 25-percent tariffs on all Canadian imports when he takes office next month.

He has said they will remain in place until Canada addresses the flow of undocumented migrants and the drug fentanyl into the United States.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised retaliatory measures should Trump follow through …