Premier Danielle Smith is dishing on her meeting with President-elect Donald Trump after visiting him at Mar-a-Lago in Florida over the weekend.
Smith held a media roundtable on Monday morning to share what she and Trump discussed, with the economy — particularly the oil and gas sector under threat by incoming tariffs — high on the agenda.
The premier shared that Albertans need to be prepared that tariffs are coming, and that’s why she wanted to have assurance that the Americans are interested in getting more of Alberta’s oil and gas.
“I think oil and gas is going to be key to to being able to get a breakthrough once uh tariffs do come in getting them off I think if we maintain a strong partnership on energy we make the case about how much the Americans benefit from that energy relationship we demonstrate that we are a good trade partner that we buy more goods and service services from America more than any other nation,” Smith stated.
“We do need to be preparing ourselves for the fact that they’re likely to come in on January 20. I haven’t seen anything that suggests that he’s changing course, so our job is going to be to work overtime.”
Smith added that Trump does seem to have an understanding of how Alberta might be able to get more oil and gas to the US; however, she does not expect any special exemptions for potential tariffs and does predict that the government will have “a lot of work to do.”
According to Smith, a key objective for the visit was to gauge Trump’s interest in continuing to have more oil and gas from Canada, and Alberta in particular, come into the United States, and she was pleased to see a positive response.
Smith added that she was a guest of Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary to visit Trump, throwing in that O’Leary is attached to a new, huge $70 billion AI tech park in Alberta.
You can check out the full media roundtable with the premier below: