Justin Trudeau talks Donald Trump, tariff threat [Video]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he thinks U.S. president-elect Donald Trump is drumming up drama on Canadian statehood to detract from tariff talks.

“What I think is happening in this is President Trump, who’s a very skillful negotiator, is getting people to be somewhat distracted by that conversation,” Trudeau said in an interview Thursday on CNN with Jake Tapper.

Trudeau said he thinks Trump is doing this to take focus off the reality that “25 per cent tariffs on oil and gas, and electricity, and steel and aluminum, and lumber and concrete, and everything the American consumers buy from Canada is suddenly going to get a lot more expensive if he moves forward on these tariffs.”

“And that’s something that I think we need to be focusing on a little bit more,” Trudeau said in the in-person interview.