Justin Trudeau makes surprise trip to Mar-a-Lago for Trump meeting | Donald Trump

Justin Trudeau made a surprise visit to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to have what he called an “excellent conversation”, making Canada’s prime minister the first G7 leader to meet with the US president-elect before his second term.

The meeting came amid widespread fears in Canada and many other parts of the world that Trump’s promised trade policy of imposing tariffs will cause widespread economic chaos.

Trudeau and a handful of top advisers flew to Florida amid expectations that Trump will impose a 25% surcharge on Canadian products that could have a devastating impact on Canadian energy, auto and manufacturing exports.

The meeting over dinner between Trudeau and Trump, their wives, US cabinet nominees and Canadian officials, lasted over three hours and was described by a senior Canadian official to the Toronto Star as a positive, wide-ranging discussion.

Leaving a Florida hotel in West Palm Beach on Saturday, Trudeau said: “It was an excellent conversation.”

The face-to-face meeting came at Trudeau’s suggestion, according to the Canadian official, and had not been disclosed to the Ottawa press corps, which only found out about Trudeau’s trip when flight-tracking software detected the prime minister’s plane was in the air.

The two leaders discussed trade; border security; fentanyl; defense matters, including Nato; and Ukraine, along with China, energy issues and pipelines, including those that feed Canadian oil and gas into the US.

Over a dinner that reportedly included a dish called “Mary Trump’s Meat Loaf”, the pair also discussed next year’s G7 meeting, which Trudeau will host in Kananaskis, Alberta – seven years after Trump abruptly left the 2018 G7 at Charlevoix, Quebec, amid a US-Canadian dispute over American steel and aluminum tariffs.

The Pennsylvania senator-elect Dave McCormick posted a photo to the social media platform X late Friday showing Trudeau sitting beside Trump. Others in the picture included Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary; Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, the pick for interior secretary; and the US representative Mike Waltz of Florida, the pick for national security adviser.

Canadian officials included the public safety minister, Dominic LeBlanc, responsible for border security, and Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford. Canada’s ambassador to Washington, Kirsten Hillman, and Trudeau’s deputy chief of staff, Brian Clow, were also at the dinner.

Trump recently claimed that “thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing crime and drugs at levels never seen before” and threatened to exact a “very big price” on the Mexican and Canadian economies if they failed to act.

But there was no indication from either side that Trump plans to step back from his threat to impose steep tariffs on Canadian exports.

LeBlanc said Canada was prepared to beef up border security, with more money for technology, drones and more Mounties and border guards on the 49th parallel.

Earlier on Friday, Trudeau told reporters that he looked forward to having “lots of great conversations” with Trump and that the two would “work together to meet some of the concerns and respond to some of the issues”.

Trudeau also said that it was “important to understand is that Donald Trump, when he makes statements like that, he plans on carrying them out. There’s no question about it.

“Our responsibility is to point out that in this way, he would actually not just be harming Canadians, who work so well with the United States, he would actually be raising prices for American citizens as well, and hurting American industry and businesses.”

The scramble to diffuse Trump’s tariff threats has also pre-occupied the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, in recent days.

On Thursday, Sheinbaum said she had had a “very kind” phone conversation with Trump in which they discussed immigration and fentanyl. She said the conversation meant there “will not be a potential tariff war” between the US and Mexico.

But the two leaders differed on Trump’s claim in a post on Truth Social that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border”.

The Mexican president later said she had not. “Each person has their own way of communicating, but I can assure you, I guarantee you, that we never – additionally, we would be incapable of doing so – proposed that we would close the border in the north [of Mexico], or in the south of the United States. It has never been our idea and, of course, we are not in agreement with that.”

Sheinbaum said the pair had not discussed tariffs but their conversation reassured her that no tit-for-tat tariff battle would be necessary.