Foreign Minister Anita Anand said Tuesday it would be “superficial” to compare the approaches Canada and Mexico have taken to navigating trade negotiations with the United States, given how different their economic relationships with the U.S. are, despite only Canada facing rising tariffs.
Anand and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne met with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and their ministerial counterparts in Mexico City to talk economic growth, trade and security.
The two-day trip comes as many Canadians wonder why the U.S. hit Canada on Friday with a 35 per cent tariff on goods not compliant with the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement on trade, known as CUSMA, while Mexico received a 90-day reprieve from threatened higher U.S. levies. The U.S. counts Canada and Mexico among its largest trading partners.
U.S. President Donald Trump said last week the 90-day period would allow room to negotiate a new trade deal with Mexico — something Canada is also currently trying to secure.
Asked if the ministers took away anything from their conversations with Sheinbaum that could help those talks along, Anand suggested the meeting was much more focused on Canada’s relationship with Mexico and “the desire for a strong North American economy.”
“I want to stress that Canada’s economic relationship with the United States differs significantly from Mexico’s,” she told reporters at a virtual briefing.
“To parse out individual elements of one country’s negotiations versus our own is somewhat superficial, because the relationship is so very complex.”
Prior to the meeting, Mexican Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard suggested he would be speaking with Champagne about about the two countries’ experiences in dealing with U.S. tariffs.
“They want to know how Mexico is getting these results,” Ebrard told journalists.
“We’re going to exchange experiences. They’re paying a 35 per cent tariff, and Mexico isn’t.”
Champagne added the talks focused on strengthening partnerships with Mexico on energy, artificial intelligence and other areas of cooperation.
He said the meeting was an example of Canada’s strategy of diversifying its international relationships in the face of unpredictability from the Trump administration, calling it the right strategy for Canadians.
Mexico secured the three-month reprieve after speaking with Trump directly last week.
Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed Tuesday at an event in British Columbia that he has not spoken to Trump “in recent days,” after previously holding several indirect conversations with the U.S. president in the weeks before Trump raised tariffs on Canada.
“We’ll speak when it makes sense,” he told reporters.
Sheinbaum posted on X after Tuesday’s meeting that Canada and Mexico were “strengthening the relationship between our countries.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford last year called for a bilateral trade deal between Canada and the United States because he said Mexico was serving as a back door for Chinese auto parts and vehicles entering the North American market. Those calls earned support from former prime minister Justin Trudeau and then-deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, now the transport minister.
Anand said Sheinbaum’s presence at this summer’s G7 summit in Alberta, where she met with Prime Minister Mark Carney, began the process of repairing the Canada-Mexico relationship and that this week’s meetings continued that process.
She called the meetings “productive” in a post on X.
“These discussions with the president and members of her government advanced key shared priorities in terms of economic growth, security and trade diversification,” she added.
Both Anand and Champagne stressed that CUSMA, which is due for a mandatory review next year, remains in the best interests of all three North American partners and should be preserved and strengthened.
—with files from Reuters