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Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump hold a press conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 7, 2025. The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld
Prime Minister Mark Carney says he expects to speak with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington next week, as both leaders attend the FIFA World Cup 2026 tournament final draw.
“Next week is an important event for Canada because we are one of the co-hosts… of the World Cup, and I’ll be participating alongside President Trump, another co-host, and the FIFA president,” Carney told reporters at a Nov. 26 press conference.
“I’ll see the president around there, but again, I don’t want to over-signal things.”
Canada, the United States, and Mexico are jointly hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and the FIFA draw on Dec.5 will determine the groupings and matchups among participating nations. Carney has said no arrangements for any additional events in the U.S. capital have been made.
Carney told reporters in French on Nov. 26 that he and Trump will have a conversation, noting that they also spoke briefly on Nov. 25. He later said the exchange was “not newsworthy.”
The prime minister said he doesn’t want to “over-dramatize” every minor conversation he has with Trump. There are “substantive” meetings, conversations, and negotiations, he said, but those are not what he is alluding to regarding his last conversation with Trump.
“This is the kind of thing I didn’t want to get drawn into, which is every little exchange,” Carney said.
Carney said that what really matters is the negotiations, not the details of their minor talks, and noted that the United States has not restarted those discussions yet. Carney said when the United States is ready to re-engage on trade negotiations, Canada is ready.
Trump called off trade negotiations with Canada on Oct. 23 over a $75 million anti-tariff advertising campaign sponsored by the Ontario government, which featured portions of a 1987 address by late U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Trump had said the ad campaign misrepresented Reagan’s stance on tariffs and was meant to interfere with a U.S. Supreme Court decision on his administration’s use of tariffs.
Trump also threatened to impose 10 percent additional tariffs on Canada after Ontario Premier Doug Ford did not pull the ad campaign immediately, but this has yet to materialize. The two countries have not participated in formal trade conversations since.
The FIFA draw will be the first time Carney has seen Trump face-to-face since the two met at a dinner in South Korea on Oct. 29, prior to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, where Carney apologized to Trump for the controversial ad campaign.
Prior to the ad controversy, momentum had appeared to be building in trade discussions between the two leaders after Carney’s second meeting with Trump at the White House on Oct. 7. Carney had alluded to the potential for deals in the metals and energy sectors.
Last week, Carney told reporters he was looking forward to “speaking with the president soon,” but noted that he doesn’t have “a burning issue to speak with the president about right now.”
He also dismissed a reporter’s question about the timing of when he last spoke with Trump by saying, “Who cares? I mean, it’s a detail. I spoke to him.”
Two days later he said he had made a mistake with his comment, saying it was “a poor choice of words about a serious issue.”
“When America wants to come back and have the discussions on the trade side, we will have those discussions,” Carney said.
