Trump’s 16th week in office to include WH meeting with Canada, ongoing trade negotiations
President Donald Trump is fresh off his 100th day in office and says his administration has no plans to slow down in the coming weeks, months and years.
“This week, we’re celebrating the most successful first 100 days of any presidential administration in the history of our country. And we’ve been given a lot of credit for that. … But we’re going to do even better as we move along,” Trump said during his commencement address at the University of Alabama on Thursday.
Trump’s 16th week back in the Oval Office is anticipated to include a meeting with Canada’s new leader, ongoing talks to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, and trade negotiations with foreign nations that are expected to continue heating up before the 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs ends in July.
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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Friday he would visit the White House on Tuesday after Carney’s Liberal Party emerged victorious in the nation’s federal election last week to discuss a 25% tariff imposed on goods from the nation sent to the U.S. and Trump’s repeated urging that the U.S. northern neighbor become the “51st state.”
“We are meeting as heads of our government,” Carney said Friday of the upcoming meeting. “I am not pretending those discussions will be easy.”
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Trump added during his meeting with Cabinet members on Thursday that he spoke with Carney after Canada’s election and predicted they would have “a great relationship.”
“He’s going to come to the White House very shortly within the next week or less,” Trump said on Thursday.
The Trump administration has leveled tariffs as high as 145% on Chinese goods as the president looks to bring parity to the nation’s chronic trade deficit with foreign countries. Trump paused his reciprocal tariff plan on dozens of nations in April as countries called on the administration to make trade deals, but he upped the ante on China as the country rebuked Trump’s trade policies with tariffs of its own, including 125% duty taxes on U.S. goods.
China’s Commerce Ministry said on Friday that officials are “evaluating” an offer from the Trump administration to hold trade talks on the 145% U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, signaling it could be a busy week of discussions if China accepts the offer.
“The U.S. has recently taken the initiative on many occasions to convey information to China through relevant parties, saying it hopes to talk with China,” the statement said, according to Reuters.
TRUMP SAYS HE WILL NOT DROP TARIFFS TO GET CHINA TO NEGOTIATING TABLE
“Attempting to use talks as a pretext to engage in coercion and extortion would not work,” the statement added.
Trump and the administration have previously said they were willing to hold trade negotiations with China, including the president saying on April 8, “We are waiting for their call. It will happen.”
The president said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he will not drop the tariffs to bring China to the negotiation table.
“They said today they want to talk. Look, China, and I don’t like this, I’m not happy about this: China’s getting killed right now,” Trump told host Kristen Welker. “They’re getting absolutely destroyed. Their factories are closing. Their unemployment is going through the roof. I’m not looking to do that to China now. At the same time, I’m not looking to have China make hundreds of billions of dollars and build more ships and more army tanks and more airplanes.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday the Trump administration will take into account China’s lack of compliance with a trade deal from the president’s first term when it finalizes a new trade deal.
“I think we’ll have to take into account that they didn’t adhere to the phase 1 deal, and … I note with great interest that the Biden administration liked the tariffs, but they didn’t enforce the purchase agreements,” Bessent said on Fox News last week.
Meanwhile, Bessent and other administration trade leaders are negotiating with dozens of other nations during the 90-day pause that began on April 9. The pause will sunset in July, meaning officials on U.S. soil and worldwide are working at a breakneck pace to secure such deals within that time frame.
Trump said on “Meet the Press” that he believes he’s closer to ironing out a peace deal after Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned last week it was “critical” to U.S. efforts to secure a peace deal between Russia and its war with neighboring Ukraine.
War has raged between Russia and Ukraine since 2022, with Trump campaigning last year to end the war that he said never would have started if he had been in office after the 2020 election.
“I do believe we’re closer with one party,” Trump said during the interview, “and maybe not as close with the other, but we’ll have to see. I’d like to not say which one we’re closer to, but we did do a deal for the American people.”
Ukraine signed a deal with the U.S. last week allowing access to Ukraine’s rare minerals as it continues to hash out a peace agreement.
TRUMP SAYS HE COULD ‘WALK AWAY’ FROM RUSSIA-UKRAINE TALKS, CITES ‘TREMENDOUS HATRED’ ON BOTH SIDES
“We were able to get rare Earth [minerals]. You know, the Europeans are getting paid back. They have a loan. We didn’t. [Former President Joe] Biden just gave him $350 billion. He has no idea where the money is. … And remember this: This is Biden’s war. This was a war that was never going to happen if I were president. This is a horrible, horrible war,” he continued.
“How long do you give both countries before you’re going to walk away?” Welker asked.
“Well, there will be a time when I will say, ‘OK, keep going, keep being stupid,’” Trump replied.
“Maybe it’s not possible to do,” he added. “There’s tremendous hatred. Just so you understand, Kristen, we’re talking tremendous hatred between these two men, and between … some of the soldiers, frankly, between the generals, they’ve been fighting hard for three years. I think we have a very good chance of doing it.”
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said on Thursday that Ukraine and Russia need to deliver “concrete ideas” to end the bloodshed or the U.S. will end its involvement in negotiations.
“Now is the time that they need to present and develop concrete ideas about how this conflict is going to end. It’s going to be up to them,” she told reporters last week, adding that the U.S. remains focused on helping secure a peace deal.
Trump tapped former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after Waltz was ousted from the National Security Council office earlier Thursday. The president said Rubio would serve as interim national security advisor, which is reminiscent of former President Richard Nixon tapping Henry Kissinger to simultaneously serve as secretary of state and national security advisor in 1973.
Headlines on the shake-up are expected to continue into this week as Democrats have said they are eager to grill Waltz in a Senate confirmation hearing to serve as the U.N. ambassador, and others said they were unsure how Rubio could serve as both secretary of state and the president’s national security advisor.
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“What worries me about Marco Rubio’s role now is the secretary of state and national security adviser. Both of those jobs are too big for one person. To have both of those jobs, including a bunch of other jobs on the shoulders of Marco Rubio, these are people who actually need sleep, if we are going to stay out of wars and stuff,” Democrat Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes told “Fox News Sunday.”
“I don’t know how anybody could do these two big jobs, and they’re, frankly, very different,” Democrat Virginia Sen. Mark Warner told CNN on Sunday of Rubio wearing two hats for the administration.
Democrats have signaled their eagerness to grill Waltz in his upcoming Senate hearing to serve as U.N. ambassador. The former national security advisor had been at the heart of the Signal chat leak debacle that unfolded in March, when the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine was inadvertently added to a group chat with high-profile Trump officials such as Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe discussing military strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
“I think there’s obvious questions about the treatment of classified or sensitive information, use of Signal, how the whole episode of Signal unfolded,” Democrat Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last week, according to the Washington Post. “But I also want to talk about [the] United Nations … [and] how he understands our security, because I think a lot of the moves by the Trump administration have made our nation less secure, not more secure.”
Fox News Digital’s Danielle Wallace, Anders Hagstrom and Eric Revell contributed to this report.
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