U.S. President Donald Trump says Prime Minister Mark Carney will visit the White House “within the next week or less” as the two countries chart a new way forward following a federal election that was largely seen as a rebuke of the president’s trade war and his 51s state ambitions.
“I think we’re going to have a great relationship,” Trump said Wednesday from the Oval Office, a day after he congratulated Carney on the phone.
“He said, let’s make a deal.”
The president said both Canadians running for office “hated Trump,” an acknowledgement of the deep rejection of his policies and rhetoric that surfaced during the election.
“And it was the one that hated Trump, I think the least, that won. I actually think the Conservatives hated me much more than the so-called Liberal,” said the president.
He went on to say Carney “couldn’t have been nicer” and called him “a very nice gentleman.”
The Prime Minister’s Office has not yet commented on Trump’s timeline.
Trump and Carney had already agreed the countries would begin negotiations on a new economic and security deal, no matter who won Monday’s election.
