The situation has Canada’s regional leaders hopping on flights to influence the incoming Trump administration themselves.
For Yukon Premier Ranj Pillai, that led to chewing the fat with the president-elect’s eldest son, Donald J. Trump Jnr, over meals of black bear spring rolls, turkey, deer and oysters at a hunting lodge in North Carolina.
Don Jnr, as he is often called, has frequented the Yukon for hunting trips, a passion Pillai shares. And the Trumps have ties to the region. More than a century ago, Donald Trump Snr’s grandfather Friedrich Trump capitalised on the Yukon gold rush with a restaurant, bar and brothel in a remote town close to the northern territory’s border.
“I made sure that I brought him, Don, some clothing, because I wanted to remind him that the Trump family businesses were Yukon-built,” Pillai said by phone. The two first met at a conference in Nevada a few months prior.
Pillai said the conversations were “incredibly positive” and an opportunity to “share some data points” and argue that the US-Canada trading deficit that stokes the president-elect’s ire “is only because we’re sending raw materials to them, and they’re creating jobs and value from that”.
