Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, calling the trade talks “very constructive” and saying he expects more meetings soon, including one with President Xi Jinping.
The meeting came after months of tensions that started when Ottawa slapped tariffs on China’s electric vehicles, steel, and aluminum. Beijing didn’t sit still, it fired back with steep duties on Canadian canola. But Carney and Li are now trying to cool things off, especially after Donald Trump returned to the White House in January and threw fresh tariffs at both Canada and China, making trade ties across the board more complicated.
Carney told reporters Tuesday that the steel tariffs were one of the more direct topics on the table. “There is some alignment of tariffs with the United States,” he said. “Particularly in the steel sector, where we’ve been very clear in the approach that we have taken, and we had an open discussion with the Premier and our China colleagues about that and the reasons for that.”
