Before Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney embarked on his weeklong journey through Asia, a meeting with President Trump was firmly on his itinerary. However, that meeting never materialized. Instead, Mr. Carney is set to return home on Saturday following an unforeseen encounter with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping.
This shift in plans perfectly illustrates the unpredictable nature of international diplomacy during President Trump’s second term.
Just as Mr. Carney’s tour began, President Trump abruptly halted trade discussions with Canada, threatening a 10 percent increase in tariffs. His reasoning? A television advertisement, funded by Ontario, that featured a speech from Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs.
With Canada-U.S. relations at a historically low point, Mr. Carney undertook his rapid tour of Malaysia, Singapore, and South Korea with a singular, overarching objective: to diversify Canada’s export markets beyond the United States.
Even a seemingly cordial meeting with Mr. Xi represents a significant achievement for Mr. Carney. Due to a series of well-publicized events in Canada, this was the first formal meeting between the top leaders of China and Canada in eight years.
Unlike President Trump, who made major announcements after his meeting with Mr. Xi in South Korea on Thursday, Mr. Carney concluded his Friday discussions without any grand statements. However, he did confirm that he accepted an invitation for further talks in Beijing.
And as has been reported, significant obstacles still lie ahead for Canada and China to truly rekindle their relationship.
President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Mark Carney during their Friday meeting.
When Mr. Carney arrived in South Korea, Air Force One served as a reminder of the current dispute with Washington.
Having traveled with Mr. Carney on this diplomatic excursion, here are a few informal observations from the trip’s final days:
Our last destination was Gyeongju, South Korea. This city, with a population of approximately 240,000, as Choe Sang-Hun, The Times’s Seoul bureau chief, notes, lacks the typical infrastructure required for major international meetings, such as an international airport and ample accommodations.
The airport situation became clear upon our arrival in Gyeongju: after a nearly seven-hour flight from Singapore, we landed on the military side of the airport in Busan, South Korea. (A fun fact I learned on this trip: Busan is the heart of South Korea’s film industry.) From there, we endured another two-hour drive to Gyeongju.
In Gyeongju, our lodging was a hotel centered around a water park, adorned with various oversized Korean cartoon characters. Like many hotels in the area, it had undergone renovations to accommodate visiting leaders, updating its entranceway and several meeting rooms.
One striking observation throughout this tour was Mr. Carney’s unwavering adherence to a formal dress code. Unlike Justin Trudeau, who often appeared without a tie, jacket off, and sleeves rolled up during his time as prime minister, Mr. Carney consistently wore tailored dark suits and black dress shoes, even amidst the sweltering heat of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, and Singapore.
The only deviation from Mr. Carney’s sartorial consistency was when he donned a hard hat and work gloves to descend into the hatch of a submarine. This occurred during a visit to a massive shipyard, employing 31,000 workers, which hopes to sell a dozen vessels to Canada as part of the prime minister’s ambitious military spending expansion program.
Mr. Carney inspected a South Korean submarine this week.
Like most politicians, Mr. Carney frequently reuses lines from previous speeches, especially when addressing international audiences outside Canada.
However, I witnessed Mr. Carney go off-script this week while addressing business leaders and investors at a Canada-sponsored reception in Kuala Lumpur, the host city for the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit.
He started by delivering a humorous jab at Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier and the figure behind the TV advertisement that provoked President Trump.
After playfully referring to Mr. Ford as a “good friend,” Mr. Carney paused and quipped: “Did I say ‘good friend’ Premier Ford? I said the always-entertaining — no — the always-interesting, the unpredictable president — Premier Ford. Sorry, I don’t know why I mixed the two up — ‘president’ and Premier Ford. Is that on, by the way?”
He concluded his remarks by jokingly proposing that he would lead the audience in a karaoke rendition of the ASEAN anthem.
At that point, cameras were promptly removed from the room, leaving his follow-through on the karaoke promise unconfirmed.
Trans Canada
This section was compiled by Vjosa Isai, a reporter based in Toronto.
- Matina Stevis-Gridneff, The Times’s Canada bureau chief, traveled to Fort Simpson in the Northwest Territories, among the Far North destinations that draw thousands of visitors to take in the aurora borealis. A new play tells the lights’ tales from the perspective of Indigenous creators, she writes.
- Calgary has long clashed over the return of fluoride to its drinking water. While fluoridation resumed in June, the battle remains as polarized as ever.
- The Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers will face off one final time, on Saturday, for Game 7 of the World Series. The Jays fell 3-1 to the Dodgers on Friday. The Series began against a backdrop of political tensions, but the national mood was ecstatic, writes Shawna Richer.
- From Opinion: Douglas A. Irwin, an economist who worked on the staff of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, says the Canadians are right about Reagan and free trade.
- Ken Maracle, a member of the Cayuga Nation, offers a glimpse at the art of making wampum belts.
- Mireille Silcoff, a cultural critic who lives Montreal, tells how she rescued her daughter from the cult of Labubu.
- Canadians are noticeably absent from Western New York.
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times. A Windsor, Ontario, native now based in Ottawa, he has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at austen@nytimes.com.
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