EU trade preferable, poll suggests as Trudeau pushes U.S. ties in February visit
OTTAWA — With the North American Free Trade Agreement hanging in the balance, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will visit three major American cities next month to stress deeper economic collaboration between the two countries.
Trudeau announced the February visit to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago as a new poll emerged suggesting Canadians are increasingly seeing the European Union, not the United States, as the country’s preferred trading partner.
The Ekos poll comes as the sixth round of NAFTA talks begins Sunday in Montreal, and with Trudeau poised to travel to the Swiss Alps to sell Canada as an investment destination to the World Economic Forum, a swish annual gathering of the world’s business elite.
It found 42 per cent of respondents view the European Union as the partner with which Canada should be aligning itself. China ranked a distant second at 18 per cent, ahead of the U.S. at 16 per cent. India ranked fourth at 11 per cent.