Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly will press Canada’s case against damaging tariffs with the new U.S. secretary of state in Washington next week, after U.S. President Donald Trump repeated a demand Thursday for allies to vastly increase their military spending.
Trump is threatening to impose 25 per cent across-the-board tariffs on imports from Canada starting on Feb. 1. Joly said things are still in flux because Trump hasn’t confirmed his new commerce secretary.
“There will be lots of rhetoric,” Joly told reporters on Parliament Hill on Thursday.
“We will hear a lot of different versions coming from south of the border. We need to put our head down, we need to be united and we need to defend Canadian jobs.”
Joly spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for half an hour by phone Wednesday and will meet with him in person next week. She said Rubio is a “good interlocutor” and she’s had “constructive” discussions with him, including when they met last …