Palm Beach: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to Florida on Friday for a dinner with Donald Trump at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate, as the incoming US leader promised tariffs on Canadian imports.
The unannounced meeting came at the end of a week that has seen Canada as well as Mexico scramble to blunt the impact of Trump’s trade threats, which experts have warned could also hit US consumers hard.
A smiling Trudeau was seen exiting a hotel in West Palm Beach before arriving at Mar-a-Lago, making him the latest high-profile guest of Trump, whose impending second term — which starts in January — is already overshadowing the last few months of President Joe Biden’s administration.
Flight trackers had first spotted a jet broadcasting the prime minister’s callsign making its way to the southern US state. A Canadian government source later told AFP that the two leaders were dining together.
Trump caused panic among some of the biggest US trading partners on Monday when he said he would impose tariffs of 25 percent on Mexican and Canadian imports and 10 percent on goods from China.
He accused the countries of not doing enough to halt the “invasion” of the United States by drugs, “in particular fentanyl,” and undocumented migrants.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke with Trump by phone on Wednesday, though the two leaders’ accounts of the conversation differed drastically.
Trump claimed that Mexico’s left-wing president had “agreed to stop migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
Sheinbaum later said she had discussed US-supported anti-migration policies that have long been in place in Mexico.
She said that after that, the talks had no longer revolved around the threat of tariff hikes, downplaying the risk of a trade war.
Billions in trade
Biden warned that same day that Trump’s tariff threats could “screw up” Washington’s relationships with Ottawa and Mexico City.
“I think it’s a counterproductive thing to do,” Biden told reporters.
Trudeau did not respond to questions from the media as he returned to his hotel Friday evening after meeting with Trump.
But for Canada, the stakes of any new tariffs are high.
More than three-quarters of Canadian exports, or Can$592.7 billion ($423 billion), went to the United States last year, and nearly two million Canadian jobs are dependent on trade.
A Canadian government source told AFP that Canada is considering possible retaliatory tariffs against the United States.
Some have suggested Trump’s tariff threat may be bluster, or an opening salvo in future trade negotiations. But Trudeau rejected those views when he spoke with reporters earlier in Prince Edward Island province.
“Donald Trump, when he makes statements like that, he plans on carrying them out,” Trudeau said. “There’s no question about it.”
According to the website Flightradar, the Canadian leader’s plane landed at Palm Beach International Airport late Friday afternoon.
Canadian public broadcaster CBC said that Trudeau’s public safety minister, Dominic LeBlanc, was accompanying him on the trip.
Trudeau in Florida to meet Trump as tariff threats loom
https://arab.news/p2xa4
Trudeau in Florida to meet Trump as tariff threats loom
- The unannounced meeting came at the end of a week that has seen Canada as well as Mexico scramble to blunt the impact of Trump’s trade threats
Is the United States after Venezuela’s oil?
- Companies from the US have pumped Venezuelan crude from the first discoveries there in the 1920s
- Venezuela exports about 500,000 barrels per day on the black market, mainly to China and other Asian countries
CARACAS: As US forces deployed in the Caribbean have zoned in on tankers transporting sanctioned Venezuelan oil, questions have deepened about the real motivation for Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on Caracas.
Is the military show of force really about drug trafficking, as Washington claims? Does it seek regime change, as Caracas fears? Could it be about oil, of which Venezuela has more proven reserves than any other country in the world?
“I don’t know if the interest is only in Venezuela’s oil,” Brazil’s leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has offered to mediate in the escalating quarrel, said last week.
The US president himself has accused Venezuela of taking “all of our oil” and said: “we want it back.”
What we know:
- Oil ties -
Companies from the United States, now the world’s leading oil producer, have pumped Venezuelan crude from the first discoveries there in the 1920s.
Many US refineries were designed, and are still geared, specifically for processing the kind of heavy crude Venezuela has in spades.
Until 2005, Venezuela was one of the main providers of oil to the United States, with some monthly totals reaching up to 60 million barrels.
Things changed dramatically after socialist leader Hugo Chavez took steps in 2007 to further nationalize the industry, seizing assets belonging to US firms.
- And now? -
Down from a peak of more than three million barrels per day (bpd) in the early 2000s, Venezuela today produces about a million barrels per day — roughly two percent of the global total.
US firm Chevron extracts about 10 percent of the total under a special license.
Chevron is the only company authorized to ship Venezuelan oil to the United States — an estimated 200,000 barrels per day, according to a Venezuelan oil sector source.
The South American country’s domestic industry has declined sharply due to corruption, under-investment and US sanctions in place since 2019.
Analysts say the high investment required to rebuild Venezuela’s crumbling oil rigs would be unappetizing for US firms, given the steady global supply and low prices.
According to Carlos Mendoza Potella, a Venezuelan professor of petroleum economics, Washington’s actions were likely “not just about oil” but rather about the United States “claiming the Americas for itself.”
“It’s about the division of the world” between the United States and its rivals, Russia and China,” he added.
Venezuela exports about 500,000 barrels per day on the black market, mainly to China and other Asian countries, according to Juan Szabo, a former vice president of state oil company PDVSA.
- Blockade -
Trump on December 16 announced a blockade of sanctioned oil vessels sailing to and from Venezuela.
Days earlier, US forces seized the M/T Skipper, a so-called “ghost” tanker transporting over a million barrels of Venezuelan oil, reportedly destined for Cuba.
Washington has said it intends to keep the oil, valued at between $50 and $100 million.
Over the weekend, the US Coast Guard seized the Centuries, identified by monitoring site TankerTrackers.com as a Chinese-owned and Panama-flagged tanker.
An AFP review did not find the Centuries on the US Treasury Department’s sanctions list, but the White House said it “contained sanctioned PDVSA oil” — some 1.8 million barrels of it.
On Sunday, officials said the Coast Guard was pursuing a third tanker, identified by news outlets as the Bella 1 — under US sanctions because of alleged ties to Iran.
The PDVSA insists its exports remain unaffected by the blockade.
This was critical, according to Szabo, as the company only has capacity to store oil for several days if exports stop.
- Impact -
Whatever Trump’s goal with Venezuelan oil, the blockade, if it continues, is likely to scare off shipping companies and push up freight rates.
Szabo expects Venezuela’s oil exports will fall by nearly half in the coming months, slashing critical foreign currency income from Venezuela’s black market sales.
This would asphyxiate the already struggling economy of Venezuela, piling more pressure on Nicolas Maduro.
The Trump administration has tip-toed around explicitly demanding for Maduro to leave.
While Trump has said he does not anticipate “war” with Venezuela, he did say Maduro’s days “are numbered.”
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News on Monday that the oil tanker seizures send “a message around the world that the illegal activity that Maduro’s participating in cannot stand, he needs to be gone.”
