Trump says he rejected a meeting with Canada that Canada says it never requested

President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on June 8, 2018, in Charlevoix. (Photo: Evan Vucci, AP)

NEW YORK – President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he rejected a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the United Nations General Assembly, but a spokeswoman for Trudeau’s government disputed that the meeting had ever been requested.

“Yeah, I did,” Trump said during a press conference in New York when asked if he has rejected the meeting. “His tariffs are too high and he doesn’t seem to want to move and I told him ‘forget about it’ and, frankly, we’re thinking about just taxing cars coming in from Canada.”

Trump’s remarks came as the U.S. and Canada have struggled to negotiate a deal to replace the 1994 North America Free Trade Agreement. Trump’s administration has said it has reached an agreement with Mexico but talks have not proceeded as quickly with Trudeau’s government.

More: Trump starts clock on withdrawing from NAFTA as talks with Canada continue

Canada is the United States’ second-largest trading partner.

But a spokeswoman for Trudeau, Eleanore Catenaro, said Canada never requested the meeting in the first place.

“No meeting was requested,” she said in a statement Trump’s press conference. “We don't have any comment beyond that.”

Relations between the longtime allies and neighbors became more frosty during the G-7 meeting in Canada this summer. As he flew away from the meeting, Trump withdrew the United States from a joint document summarizing agreements made at the G-7 in response to comments Trudeau made at a press conference.

Trudeau said at the time that Canada would not be “pushed around” by the United States.

The relationship erupted again when off-the-record remarks Trump made during an interview with Bloomberg wound up published in the Toronto Star. Trump said in the interview that he was not compromising with Canada but could say that publicly because it would be insulting.

More: Journalist says Bloomberg not source of Trump's off-the-record remarks

Trump was more than willing to use blunt language during his press conference in New York.

“We’re very unhappy with the negotiations,” he said, “and the negotiating style of Canada.”

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2InAfFO

strangebru on September 28th, 2018 at 15:52 UTC »

WHY LIE ABOUT SOMETHING SO EASILY CONFIRMED?

Seated_Heats on September 28th, 2018 at 14:49 UTC »

I totally understand this. I've turned down Scarlett Johansson for at least 12 dates.

MyStolenCow on September 28th, 2018 at 14:44 UTC »

This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And he had a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook. His response is to accuse everybody else of lying. He accuses everybody on that debate stage of lying, and it's simply a mindless yell. Whatever he does, he accuses everyone else of doing. The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist. A narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen. Donald Trump is such a narcissist, that Barack Obama looks at him and goes, ‘Dude, what’s your problem?’ Everything in Donald’s world is about Donald. And he combines being a pathological liar, and I say pathological because I actually think Donald—if you hooked him up to a lie-detector pass, he could say one thing in the morning, one thing at noon, and one thing in the evening, all contradictory, and he'd pass the lie-detector test each time. Whatever lie he’s telling, at that minute he believes it, but the man is utterly a moron.

Ted Cruz telling the truth for once in 2016.