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Assassination attempt shakes Colombia's political landscape
On Ian Bremmer’s World In 60 Seconds: Ian breaks down the assassination attempt on Colombia's presidential candidate, the US-China trade talks, and Canada plans to hit NATO's 2% defense target seven years early.
Ian's takeaways:
An assassination attempt on a Colombian presidential candidate highlights that “security continues to be a really serious problem,” as opposition momentum grows amid President Petro’s struggles.
On US-China trade, Ian says, “There is real progress happening,” as factory shutdown threats push both sides toward short-term stability, even if long-term trust remains elusive.
And Canada’s plan to hit NATO’s defense target early? “It’s about Trump,” Ian notes, as Ottawa moves to ease tensions with Washington ahead of 2025.
US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney meet in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., USA, on May 6, 2025.
Carney met Trump: How did it go?
The first official meeting between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and US President Donald Trump was friendlier than you might expect given the recent tensions in the relationship. Carney described Trump as a “transformational” president, while the US leader said he had “a lot of respect” for his Canadian counterpart.
It wasn’t all pleasantries, however: Trump again said Canada should become the 51st state, to which Carney cautioned the former real estate magnate that “there are some places that are never for sale.”
Trump’s response? “Never say never.”
The start of a beautiful friendship? Despite some disagreements, the two leaders agreed to begin talks on new economic and security frameworks. The Canadian dollar even rallied slightly after the “positive” exchange.
But tariffs remain in place: Canada and the US are keeping their tariffs on each other’s steel, aluminum, and auto industries for now.
Next stop, the G7. The two men will meet again, along with other world leaders, when Canada hosts the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, next month. Ahead of that, Carney gave Trump a gift. What was it? A Kananaskis Country Golf Course hat, naturally, and some other gear from the resort.
For more on Tuesday’s White House tête-à-tête and upcoming trade talks, read GZERO’s interview below with former Canadian Progressive Conservative leader and Quebec Premier the Hon. Jean Charest.
Can Trump and Carney reset US-Canada relations?
But it has reduced cause for panic, in part because Trump stated a commitment of the United States to the basic alliance, to the security umbrella, to defending Canada as necessary, which was something he wasn't saying over the past few months with Justin Trudeau. He clearly likes Carney more than Trudeau, which is not surprising because that bar is pretty much on the floor. And also stopped with the governor speak, which is clearly disrespectful, but did push on the 51st state issue, and how much better it would be for Canada if they were actually a part of the United States, not that he intends to take it over militarily, but rather something he's going to keep talking about.
And Carney didn't interrupt Trump when he was going on and on, talking about that, but then responded with his best line of the conversation, which is, "I've spent the last couple months going around talking to the owners of Canada, meaning the voters, the citizens of Canada, and it's never, never, never going to happen." Trump says, "Never say never," and they kind of agree to disagree on something they shouldn't be talking about to begin with. But at the end of the day, not much there. The bigger problem, of course, is that there is an incredibly important trade relationship between the US and Canada. And no, it is not true that the US doesn't do much business with Canada. In fact, Canada actually buys more from the United States than any other individual country in the world does. And if you go talk to the governors, the senators, the representatives of all of the northern states that border Canada, they can tell you just how integrated those supply chains are, how essential the Canadian economy is for them.
And some of those are blue states, some of those are red states, and it don't really matter, they all care a lot about their relationship with Canada. So, it is important. But because Trump is individually taking the right to tariff from Congress, where it legally sits, and using legally contestable national emergency clauses to enforce tariffs, impose tariffs on other countries, including those that are governed by pre-existing trade relationships, like Canada, which has a robust USMCA, US-Mexico-Canada agreement, that Trump himself helped drive, negotiate, and trumpeted as a huge win at the time, but now he is singularly undermining it. And what that means is that we are very unlikely to get to a new agreed USMCA in the coming year, despite the utility of renegotiating it with the sunset clause, and instead... look, I don't think anyone's going to run away from it, I don't think it's going to break, instead, it means that every year we're going to kick it down the road and renegotiate so that you can keep it going.
And that means that the Canadians don't feel like they have a functional multilateral trade arrangement with the US and Mexico, that also means, because the US president can change it at any moment he wishes, and also that an enormous amount of time is going to be spent in those negotiations, not just now, but every year, creating more uncertainty for those that need to want to rely on the long-term stability of that trade relationship. And here is the rub, which is that the US-Canada relationship will stay important, it'll stay robust, but it will become more transactional, where it had been built on trust and shared values, and that means the Canadians will work really hard to hedge and de-risk their relations from their most important trading partner.
About 75% of Canadian trade is with the United States right now, they rely much more on the US than the Americans rely on Canada, Trump is absolutely right about that, but they now see that as a vulnerability. And for the last 40 years, the Canadians, really since '88, '89, the Canadians have focused singularly on increasing their interdependence with the United States. They built out all of this infrastructure from the provinces, not east-west, but rather north-south. If you look at the way that rail transit, and energy infrastructure, and supply chains work in Canada, it's as if these provinces were independent republics set up to do business just with the United States, not focused on what would make sense for an independent sovereign Canada over the long term, if that relationship suddenly were ruptured.
Well, that needs to change, and that's something that you're going to see the Canadians work very strongly on over the coming years. Easier for Carney to do, because his relationships internationally are much stronger than previous Canadian prime ministers, certainly generationally, if you think about the fact that he was Central Bank governor in the UK, and that one of his best international relationships is actually with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and others and others, I think you're going to see a very strong effort to work with the UK, to work with the Commonwealth, to work with the EU, and to help shift those trade flows over time to hedge further away from the US.
And the costs of that will be significant, the impact of the trade rupture in the near term will be a major recession in Canada imminently, and a mild recession in the United States imminently as well, but over the long term, my view is no one benefits from that.
So, that's the main takeaway, a little less theatric maybe than the internet, apologies for that, but it is the way I see it, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
An image of Prime Minister Mark Carney positioned near the Canadian parliament.
Now comes the hard part for Carney
Mark Carney, who has never sat in Parliament and has only been a politician for four months, faces a lot of political puzzles after leading his Liberal Party to victory in Canada on Monday, and one huge challenge south of the border.
The former central banker was widely expected to win a majority but ended up coming short, with 169 seats in the House, just three short of a majority. That means that the path ahead is twistier than it would otherwise have been.
Opposition parties plagued by infighting and weakness
Still, there is no danger of Carney’s government falling any time soon. The New Democratic Party was all but annihilated on Monday, left with only seven leaderless MPs after Jagmeet Singh came third in his British Columbia riding and stepped down as party leader. The last thing they will want is to go to an election anytime soon.
And Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet, who has just 22 MPs, down from 32, said Monday that he recognizes that voters want stability. The leader of the provincial separatist party is attacking him, which suggests they have issues they need to sort out.
That leaves the Conservatives, with 144 seats, up 25 from the last election. They can be expected to vote against the Liberal government, but there are not enough of them to stop anything, and they seem to have some internal battles they will want to finish before they are ready to fight anyone outside their movement.
During the campaign, Conservative Ontario Premier Doug Ford repeatedly cast shade on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Ford’s campaign manager, Kory Teneycke, made headlines last month when he denounced Poilievre as incompetent: “This campaign is going to be studied for decades as the biggest f**king disaster in terms of having lost a massive lead.”
On election night, an MP close to Poilievre, Jamil Jivani, angrily denounced Ford as “a hype man for the Liberal Party,” which suggests the feud is not finished.
Poilievre, who gave Ford’s people a cold shoulder for two years while he was 20 points ahead in the polls, is vulnerable after losing an election that he seemed to have in the bag. The last two leaders of his party were forced out after losing to Trudeau, but they did not face the kind of open disdain that Poilievre does, and on Monday night, he lost his own seat, which means he will not be in the House until he convinces an MP to resign to let him run.
The Liberals, who will not miss his devastating critiques in the House, have six months to call a byelection to let him win a seat. They probably will not be petty and make him wait, but he will still not be there until the fall.
How Liberals can govern without a majority
If Carney wants to, he could likely manage to lure a few MPs across the floor to join his party, which would give him a majority. It would look cynical but would allow the Liberals to control committees where the government can be embarrassed and legislation bogged down.
Either way, Carney can govern as if he has a majority until the other parties get organized, and he has things he wants to do. He won a mandate to use deficit financing to build the economy, which is already on the brink of a recession thanks to a trade war with the Americans.
“We will need to do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen in generations,” he said in his victory speech Monday night.
He has promised to jumpstart the economy and tackle the housing crisis with a pre-fabricated housing program, build new energy corridors, remove interprovincial trade barriers, and renegotiate the trade relationship with the United States.
Politics should not get in his way, says Gerald Butts, vice chairman of Eurasia Group, who advised Carney during the election campaign.
“I don’t think he’s going to peel back on his major promises, whether it’s the housing, building the housing agency, free trade in Canada, all the stuff that he kept saying,” Butts said. “His view is very direct on this, that ‘I asked for a mandate to do big things, I got a mandate to do big things, and now I'm going to do those things,’ and that he has the responsibility to do them.”
The Conservatives can be expected to oppose his agenda, but he doesn’t need them to get his stuff through the House, says Fred DeLorey, who was campaign manager for Poilievre’s predecessor, Erin O’Toole.
“He likely has a bit of wiggle room, depending on what it is he brings in and how aggressive it is and how palatable it is to the Bloc and NDP,” DeLorey said. “If he brings in something that really is against their values, you're gonna have a problem.”
Will Carney and Trump get along?
Carney won by promising to stand up to Donald Trump, his tariffs, and his annexation threats. The two men spoke the day after the election and agreed to meet in person soon. In a news release, Carney’s office said they "agreed on the importance of Canada and the United States working together – as independent, sovereign nations – for their mutual betterment."
Trump, of course, is insisting that Canada should become the 51st state, something Canadians rejected in Monday’s election.
In his concession speech, Poilievre promised to “put Canada first as we stare down tariffs and other irresponsible threats from President Trump.”
Trump has been remarkably consistent about his annexation plans, and Carney won the election by promising to resist those plans, so it is hard to know how the relationship will work.
“I think that on the one hand, Mark can be caricatured by the right in the United States and abroad as a globalist elite,” said Butts. “On the other, he’s the kind of person who Trump would respect. So I don’t know how it’s gonna go, to be honest. It’s gonna be a hard restart of the personal diplomatic relationship between the two countries at the highest levels.”
So far, so good. On Wednesday, Trump had kind words for the new prime minister and said Carney would be traveling to the White House within a week. Carney has been successful at everything he has done in his professional life, so it would be foolish to bet against him, but everything now depends on how he manages Canada’s southern neighbor.
Carney to meet Trump: Not time to talk turkey – yet
The White House wants to deal with Asian countries before it gets around to USMCA, the trade agreement governing trade with Canada and Mexico.
“It makes sense to separate out Canada and Mexico from the rest because they are going to want to redo the USMCA,” a source close to the White House told Politico. “They’re going to have separate tariffs that focus specifically on Mexico and Canada, and they’re going to take some actions to squeeze them a little bit.”
A delay might also suit Carney. A former central banker, Carney became prime minister in March but almost immediately went to the polls to get a democratic mandate. Canadian politics has been thoroughly disrupted since Trump started issuing tariff threats before his inauguration in January. Carney could benefit from a period of calm in which he can consult with other politicians, business, and labor to figure out the best strategy to take to USMCA renegotiations and try to soothe the anger in the oil-rich Prairies, where voters were hoping for a Conservative government.
Ultimately, Trump’s willingness to engage in trade negotiations may be driven by broader economic concerns, and he may be motivated to make some deals if it helps turn the economy around. Official numbers released Wednesday show the economy shrank in the first quarter, likely as a result of Trump’s tariffs.
President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on April 23, 2025.
White House claims win on border security but stays mum on tariffs
In response to Trump’s tariff threats, Canada presented a security plan that included drones and helicopters for border patrols. The government began to roll the plan out soon after. In February, it expanded the plan, adopting a “Fentanyl Czar” and listing drug cartels as terrorists under the country’s Criminal Code.
Now, the White House is claiming that there have been “successes” at the border. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says “Thanks to President Trump, operational control of the border is becoming a reality, and the administration’s historic measures are yielding huge results,” with apprehensions down 95% from March 2024 levels.
Despite the successes cited by Trump, tariffs on Canada remain in place, including 25% on non-USMCA-compliant goods along with steel and aluminum, and 10% on energy and potash. There’s been no indication from the White House the tariffs are going anywhere, regardless of what happens with the border. That may be a vindication for those who’ve argued that the border was an excuse for tariffs, not a reason. But as the US and Canada face recession risks amid the trade war, it will be of limited comfort at best.
An aerial view shows a truck crossing into the United States over the Cordova of the Americas border bridge, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on April 2, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Border apprehensions plunge, Maplewashing crops up, Fentanyl trickles in, Trump puts “Truth” on the block
7,180: US border authorities apprehended just 7,180 migrants illegally crossing the Southern Border in March, the lowest monthly number on record. The figure marks a twentyfold decline from the monthly average over the past four years as the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on undocumented migration continues. A recent poll put popular support for Trump’s immigration approach at 49%, the highest mark of any issue.
6: You may have heard of “pinkwashing,” “greenwashing,” “sanewashing,” or the more conventional “whitewashing.” But now there’s “maplewashing.” As of mid-March, Canadian authorities have busted six companies for fraudulently claiming their products are made in Canada rather than the US. The crackdown comes as the “Buy Canadian” movement, which boycotts American products, continues to grow in response to Donald Trump’s threats against Canada.
0.1: Donald Trump has said fentanyl is “pouring” into the US from Canada. But one man’s “pour” is another man’s “barely perceptible trickle.” Turns out, barely 0.1% of the drug seized along the US northern border last year actually came from Canada, according to government data obtained by the Globe & Mail. The remaining 99.9% came either from Mexico or from elsewhere in the US.
2.3 billion: The truth may be priceless, but Truth Social? That’s a different story. President Donald Trumpsuggested this week that he was open to selling his $2.3 billion stake in the social media company, which is a competitor of X in the microblogging space. The company has lost some 40% of its market value this year amid a wider stock market plunge triggered by uncertainty about Trump’s trade and tariff plans.Air Canada and Westjet aircraft parked at Calgary International Airport, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Cross-border travel down as rhetoric gets harsher
The increasingly intense rhetorical combat between Donald Trump and Canada is taking a growing toll on the American tourism industry, as Canadian snowbirds avoid Florida, day trippers do their shopping at home, and others decide to skip trips to the Big Apple.
In his defiant speech promising to stand up to Trump last month, Justin Trudeau said it was time “to choose Canada.” There are indications that Canadians listened, which is hitting US tour operators and exporters in the pocketbook, as planned.
Not everyone has changed their travel plans, of course, but the numbers are down, flights are getting canceled, and there are worrying signs of increased hostility south of the border, which could further depress cross-border trips.
A touring folk music duo was grilled about their loyalties during a traffic stop, a Canadian who appeared in an “American Pie” video was detained by ICE for 12 days, and the Trump administration has imposed new rules requiring some visitors to register.
Trump’s rhetoric — he called Canadians nasty on Fox News on Tuesday -– and a rising tide of Canadian “elbows up” nationalism — can be expected to reduce typically friendly cross-border interactions, which could harden feelings on both sides of the world’s longest undefended border.