Justin Trudeau praised Joe Biden for returning to the Paris climate deal during his first bilateral meeting, saying, “The US leadership has been sorely missed in recent years.”
The Canadian Prime Minister added: “And I must say that, while we were preparing the joint release of the communiqué on this, it is good when the Americans are not removing all references to climate change and adding it instead.”
The meeting – held virtually between Sala Roosevelt at the White House and Trudeau in his Ottawa office because of the pandemic – was Biden’s first with a foreign counterpart since taking office,
Biden returned Trudeau’s compliments, saying, “The United States has no closer friend, nor closer friend, than Canada.”
After talking for about two hours, the two leaders emerged and said they planned to work together to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic and fight climate change, with the goal of achieving zero net emissions by 2050.
Trudeau also thanked Biden for reiterating US support for the release of two Canadians detained by China, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. “Human beings are not exchanging tokens,” said Biden. “We will work together until we get their safe return.”
It was not clear whether Trudeau raised the idea of allowing Canada, which is struggling to vaccinate its population, to buy vaccines from the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s plant in Michigan. Canada is receiving vaccines sent from a Pfizer factory in Belgium.
Trudeau raised the issue when the two leaders spoke by phone last month, Biden’s first call to a foreign leader as president. But Biden’s “first priority” remains “ensuring that all Americans are vaccinated,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said before the meeting.
Another area of concern for Trudeau is the executive order “Buy American” that Biden signed during his first week in office. The goal is to encourage the federal government to spend more than an estimated $ 600 billion for acquisitions to boost factories and hiring in the United States.
Biden said that as part of the push, he was creating a “Made in America” office to evaluate contracts and ensure that layoffs were used only in “very limited circumstances”, such as when there is overwhelming national security, humanitarian or emergency in the US. The question is crucial for Canada, as the United States accounts for about 75% of its exports.
“I don’t expect them to make any commitments during today’s meeting,” said Psaki on Tuesday when asked about the possibility of Canada receiving a waiver of the “Buy American” order.
Spavor and Kovrig were arrested in China after the arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, Canada, after the U.S. requested his extradition to face charges that the Chinese telecommunications company’s executive committed electronic and banking fraud and violated sanctions. from the USA to Iran. She denies the charges.
China attacked Canada last week for joining the United States and 56 other countries in endorsing a statement denouncing state-sponsored arbitrary detention of foreign nationals for political purposes.
Canadian officials expect Trudeau to have a much more productive relationship with Biden than he did with Donald Trump. The Republican president, in a bout of resentment in 2018, accessed Twitter after a meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized countries to denigrate the prime minister as “dishonest and weak” after Trudeau expressed objections to Trump’s steel tariff hikes and aluminum from Canada, Mexico and the European Union.