A week before Donald Trump fired off yet another tariff threat on his neighbours, Justin Trudeau and Claudia Sheinbaum had a chance to confer in person about how to tackle that very scenario. Would they join forces against their errant trading partner or was it going to be a case of every person for themselves?

The evidence is pointing to the latter.

The two leaders huddled at the Group of 20 summit in Brazil, and what emerged was that the embattled Canadian prime minister was preoccupied with probing his counterpart on Chinese investment — such as whether BYD Co. would be making cars in Mexico — while the freshly elected president south of the border was looking for assurances Trudeau wouldn’t succumb to pressure to eject her country from their three-way trade pact with the United States.

“The prime minister does not agree with taking Mexico out of the treaty, he told me so clearly,” Sheinbaum was at pains to tell reporters after their tête-à-tête. “He asked me about a Chinese company’s auto plant, and if there was a plant in Mexico.” She pointed out that BYD’s only North American plant was in California.

The real test of whether the duo would handle Trump’s hardball tactics as allies — or if they would turn on each other to earn his favour — came soon after. As they returned from Rio de Janeiro, Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to announce he would impose 25 per cent tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada.

Within two hours, Trudeau was on the phone with him. Four days later he was flying to Palm Beach to dine on steak and mashed potatoes with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Diplomats and policymakers in the rest of the world are taking notes of what one G20 official in Rio described as a form of psychological warfare unfolding in real time. On the one hand, you have the economics of what tariffs will do. On the other you have rhetoric, and if that alone can shift behaviour.

Canada and Mexico are in the immediate firing line, but globally they all know that soon enough Trump will be coming for them too. It didn’t take long, in fact, for the U.S. president-elect to send another warning shot: this time to BRICs, telling them they will face 100 per cent tariffs if they dare set up a currency to rival the dollar in global trade.

Deciding how to react to Trump’s provocations and his habit of trying to divide and conquer opponents is something veterans of his first term — like Trudeau — experienced first-hand. He still carries the scars from the 2018 Group of Seven summit he hosted where Trump marched off in a huff and ripped up the communique.

For Friday’s dinner in Florida, the Canadians went in with a mission of establishing personal connections with Trump and his new inner circle. One official with knowledge of the dinner said it was important that some key Trump nominees — Mike Waltz for national security adviser, Howard Lutnick for commerce, Doug Burgum for interior — were in attendance, as was Trudeau’s public safety minister, Dominic Leblanc. Phone numbers were exchanged.

Chumming it up with Trump is no guarantee he’ll back down, and indeed, no promises were made at the dinner. But Trudeau and his team feel they have a better understanding of the playing field, said the official. Trudeau pledged to beef up border security with more helicopters and police.

Sheinbaum, meanwhile, has no personal history with Trump to draw on. She’s new to the scene but comes in with a strong mandate — in contrast to Trudeau, who is politically weak back home. After nine years in office his poll numbers are brutal, and he is widely expected to lose the election that will take place sometime in 2025.

The Mexican leader is walking a careful line. Only two months into her term, her style is discernibly different from that of her mentor and predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a charismatic populist who hit it off with Trump when the two finally met in spite of the years of trading insults about uncontrolled migrants and drug trafficking.

She’s trying to show she’s no pushover. While she talks tougher when speaking to her domestic audience in Spanish, Sheinbaum doesn’t take a confrontational tone with Trump himself.

She hasn’t gone for flattery — which is one way to ingratiate oneself with Trump — and has been more blunt than Trudeau. Sheinbaum chose to publish a letter to Trump that pushed back on his claims, and has publicly suggested Mexico would hit back with retaliatory tariffs.

“We collaborate. We never subordinate ourselves,” Sheinbaum told reporters about how her approach. The two spoke by phone Nov. 27 and Sheinbaum pointed out everything Mexico has already been doing to work with the U.S. “If we manage to co-ordinate on this, there won’t be tariffs.”

Whatever she told Trump in private seems to have worked.

In a social media post after their chat, Trump described the call as a “wonderful conversation” and claimed the Mexican leader agreed to halt migration through her country into the U.S., “effectively closing our Southern Border.”

That was an interpretation Sheinbaum didn’t share, so she carefully — but unequivocally — clarified without explicitly correcting him. “We want to reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and between peoples,” she wrote in a post on X.

By the numbers, the situation at the Mexican and Canadian borders are wildly lop-sided. U.S. statistics showed border agents captured an average of 1,810 pounds of fentanyl a month at the U.S.-Mexico border from January 2022 to October 2024. Over that period, an average of 1.8 pounds a month was seized at the northern border.

In the 12 months up to Sept. 30, the number of people encountered by U.S. border patrol trying to enter the U.S. from Canada outside of regular ports of entry was 24,000, versus 1.5 million at the southern border.

Trudeau has repeatedly stressed these numbers to Trump, arguing it’s wrong to lump Canada and Mexico together — a sign that when push comes to shove, he’s willing to kick Mexico to the curb.

For her part, Sheinbaum has chalked up some of the statistics to bad information, pointing out that Mexico had already slapped tariffs on Chinese steel earlier this year and that Canadian imports of Chinese-made vehicles surpassed Mexico’s.

“Canada also has a serious problem with fentanyl consumption,” she added.

Ultimately, both face the same challenge: what level of action will it take to minimally satisfy Trump to the point where he can declare victory and pull back on his threats?

Trump, for his part, seems to be enjoying himself, and even having some fun at Trudeau’s expense. According to Fox News, he joked with Trudeau that if he cannot handle his list of demands, Canada could always become the U.S.’s 51st state — and he its governor. A Canadian minister who was present when the conversation took place said Trump’s comments were made in jest during a light-hearted conversation over Thanksgiving dinner.

Bloomberg.com