Canada says Trump's advisers urged Trudeau to convince Trump not to tear up NAFTA - but the White House says otherwise
The White House and Canada have offered conflicting accounts of the events that led up to President Trump's decision not to pull the US's participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.
On the day the White House threatened to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, emerged as a key conduit between the US and Canada.
But Kushner's role has sparked a cross-border game of telephone tag and differing accounts about who called who first.
According to a White House official, aides to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Kushner urgently on April 26 after seeing news reports that Trump was considering signing an executive order withdrawing from NAFTA.
But Canadian media reports paint a different story.
According to what Canadian government officials told The National Post, White House staff called Trudeau's office to urge the prime minister to convince Trump not to withdraw from the trade agreement. The Canadian Press news agency said the same, reporting that it was Kushner who first reached out to Trudeau's chief of staff to suggest a call between the two leaders.
In reference to Trump's initial considerations about an executive order that would scrap the US's involvement in NAFTA, one government source told the National Post, "You never know how much of it is theater, but it didn't feel that way."
That same day, the White House put out a statement saying that the president had agreed not to terminate NAFTA. He said he was open to renegotiating the terms of NAFTA after a conversation with Trudeau and Mexican president Peña Nieto.
"Maybe they're just learning how to be a government. At least they were open to the conversation, and that stopped them doing something rash and destructive," the Canadian government official told the National Post.