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Many of the prime minister’s political opponents were as critical of him as about the president-elect’s plan, which would adversely affect Canada’s economy.
Amid rapidly growing anxiety over the potential harms to Canada if President-elect Donald J. Trump fulfills his promise to impose heavy tariffs on the country, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday that he would seek a united political front at an emergency meeting the following day with all of his country’s provincial and territorial leaders.
“One of the really important things is that we be all pulling together on this,” he told reporters in Ottawa. “The Team Canada approach is what works.”
But Mr. Trudeau may not be able to muster as unified a response as he managed during the previous Trump administration. Most of the premiers are his political opponents, his Liberal federal government isn’t polling well and he is vulnerable in the next federal election, which must be held within a year.
In the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s announcement, several premiers criticized Mr. Trudeau as much as they denounced Mr. Trump’s plan.
“The concerns expressed by Donald Trump are legitimate concerns,” François Legault, the premier of Quebec, said at a news conference, adding that he would demand that his province be allowed to directly join any possible trade negotiations with the United States. He also, like many of Mr. Trudeau’s political opponents, accused the prime minister of not taking the threat of tariffs seriously enough, predicting that tens of thousands of jobs would be lost in Quebec and the rest of Canada.
Doug Ford, a Progressive Conservative and the premier of Ontario, the most populous province and the center of manufacturing in Canada, said that the announcement by Mr. Trump felt “like a family member stabbing you right in the heart.”
But Mr. Ford also criticized Mr. Trudeau’s government for failing to secure a boundary that both Canada and the United States once boasted was the longest undefended border in the world.
“We have to tighten our borders on both sides,” he said.
Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative opposition leader, indicated that he was open to cutting Mexico out of tripartate free trade agreement with Canada and the United States as a way to mollify the Trump administration.
“I only care about Canada,” he said at a news conference. “I want to put our country first.” He added: “We trade more with the U.S. than we do with the rest of the world combined. I will do what is necessary to preserve that relationship above all others.”
Mr. Poilievre said that he favored retaliation if the tariffs came into force. An earlier Conservative government negotiated Canada’s original free trade deal with the United States during the Reagan administration.
Throughout Tuesday, Mr. Trudeau and senior members of his cabinet called for calm and insisted that they would be able to again work with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trudeau said he’d had a “good call” with Mr. Trump on Monday night, adding that they had talked about “some of the challenges we can work on together.”
“Rather than panicking, we’re engaging in constructive ways to protect Canadian jobs like we have before,” Mr. Trudeau said in the House of Commons, playing down the possibility of a trade war.
“The idea of going to war with the United States isn’t what anyone wants,” he said, adding that “there is work we can do together. That is the work we will do seriously, methodically. But without freaking out.”
Chrystia Freeland, the finance minister and deputy prime minister, emphasized that Canada represented the largest market for exports from the United States and that its exports — including oil, electricity and minerals — remained important to the U.S. economy and national security.
Dominic LeBlanc, the public safety minister, said that Canadians “absolutely share the Americans’ concern around the integrity of the border,” noting that the two countries had been working together for decades on enhancing border security. Mr. LeBlanc said that the government had given the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Border Services Agency additional funds to introduce drones and other technologies to patrol the border.
When asked if Mr. Trump was bluffing about imposing tariffs, Ms. Freeland, who led the renegotiation of NAFTA during the first Trump administration for Canada, said, “We have to take what President Trump is saying very seriously,”
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times based in Ottawa. He covers politics, culture and the people of Canada and has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at austen@nytimes.com. More about Ian Austen
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