Minister Joly Says Trump Holds the Cards on Tariffs After Rubio Meeting

Canadian officials are making a diplomatic push in Washington to avoid U.S. tariffs but ultimately they remain in the dark about U.S. President Donald Trump’s intentions, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Joly held a first meeting with Rubio in his new capacity on Jan. 29. While she said her arguments to U.S. officials explaining what’s at stake for the two countries if tariffs are imposed are “definitely resonating,” Joly told reporters after the meeting she has no insight on what the U.S. administration plans to do.

“Am I in the head space of President Trump? No, of course not,” she said, calling Trump the “ultimate decision-maker.”

“And so in that sense, I’m just doing the job of making sure that people around him really are able to sign on our different arguments,” she said.

Joly said she spoke with Rubio about Canada’s border plan, on the impacts tariffs would have on the two countries, and on Ottawa’s intention to retaliate if push comes to shove. The two also spoke about geopolitical issues including Ukraine, the Middle, East, the Arctic, and China.

Rubio’s office issued a readout of the meeting saying the two top diplomats spoke on how to collaborate on issues such as border and energy security.

The readout also says Rubio “commended Canada for confronting the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party] coercive and unfair economic practices,” without elaborating further. Ottawa imposed in October a 100 percent tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles and a 25 percent tariff on Chinese steel and aluminum.

Tariffs Intended for ‘Action’

While no new information on potential U.S. tariffs came out of the Rubio meeting, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary Howard Lutnick provided some insight around the tariff strategy during his Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 29.

Lutnick said the threat to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico was intended to “create action” on strengthening the border and that tariffs can be avoided if the response is adequate. He also spoke of a second wave of tariffs that could come in the spring after the U.S. government completes a review of trade imbalances.

Trump ordered the review by way of memorandum on his first day in office on Jan. 20. In his initial tariff threat made in late November 2024, Trump said he would impose the broad tariffs on his first day.

Ottawa responded to the threat by preparing a $1.3 billion border plan, which includes deploying two newly-acquired Black Hawk helicopters to patrol the border, along with new surveillance equipment and detector dog teams.

Lutnick commented on Canada’s border plan, saying “as far as I know, they are acting swiftly, and if they execute it, there will be no tariff.”

This was in contrast to the White House saying earlier this week that tariffs could be imposed on Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1.

Joly said she viewed Lutnick’s comments as “positive” and added that every time she presents the border plan and statistics on illegal immigration and fentanyl to U.S. officials, “that is definitely also resonating.”

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the last fiscal year seized 43 pounds of fentanyl coming from Canada and 21,000 pounds coming from Mexico. CBP also had 199,000 encounters with removable non-citizens coming across the northern border, compared to 2.1 million encounters at the southern border.

While there’s a large gap between those numbers, Canada does have a growing fentanyl problem, according to the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC). Its public report for 2024 mentions an increasing number of criminal groups involved in the trade and a growing trend of manufacturing and exporting out of Canada.

CBP has also intercepted more individuals on a terrorist watchlist crossing into the United States from Canada (358) compared to Mexico (52) in fiscal year 2024.

Foreign nationals have also been exploiting genuine Canadian visas to enter the country with the intention of then crossing illegally in the United States, according to federal authorities. Immigration Canada said tighter scrutiny over the last months has led to a decrease in the abuse.

Matthew Horwood contributed to this report.