Top diplomats from G7 countries meet in Canada as Trump threatens more tariffs on US allies

It also meant that Rubio, on his first official trip to Canada and his first to a G7 event, was likely to hear a litany of complaints as he met with the foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.

All of them have been angered by the new American president’s policies, and they smiled stiffly in frigid temperatures as they posed for a group photo at a snowy resort in La Malbaie, Quebec, on the St. Lawrence River.

“Peace and stability is at the top of our agenda, and I look forward to discussing how we continue to support Ukraine in the face of Russia’s illegal aggression,” Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said as she gaveled the meetings into session.

Rubio had met earlier with Joly, arriving in Quebec late Wednesday just hours after Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs kicked in — prompting irate responses from the European Union and Canada. Neither Rubio nor Joly spoke, and neither the State Department nor the Canadian foreign ministry issued normally customary readouts of the discussion.

In fact, there was little, if any, information to emerge about the closed-door discussions on Thursday that were punctuated by uncertainty over Joly's planned depature for Ottawa on Friday before the G7 meeting had been scheduled to close to attend soon-to-be new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's first Cabinet meeting.

But, en route to Canada from Saudi Arabia, where he had won agreement from Ukraine for a 30-day ceasefire in the war, Rubio had dismissed suggestions that he would face an uncomfortable reception from this counterparts.

Canada signals it won’t back down

Joly, however, had made it clear that Canada, at least, would not back down. Trump has arguably been most antagonistic toward Canada with persistent talk of it becoming the 51st U.S. state, additional tariffs and persistent insults against its leadership, much of which he repeated on Thursday in comments at the White House.

Ahead of the talks, Joly had said she would use every meeting at the G7 to raise Trump's tariffs and coordinate a response. She also noted that Trump had continued to press "his disrespectful 51st state rhetoric.”

For his part, Trump doubled down on the anti-Canada rhetoric during an Oval Office meeting on Thursday with NATO chief Mark Rutte. “To be honest with you, Canada only works as a state,” Trump said before going on to say that he’s not going to change his mind on the tariffs he’s imposing on Canada. “We’ve been ripped off for years,” he said. “We’re not going to bend."

Rubio had downplayed Trump's earlier comments, saying the president was only expressing what he thought would be a good idea. The G7 "is not a meeting about how we’re going to take over Canada,” he said.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said G7 nations should avoid panic and posted a message of support for Canada on X, featuring a photo of her and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas. “We’ve got your back, @melaniejoly,” she wrote. “#Canada #Solidarity”

“We have learned altogether in these shaky geopolitical times ... especially in moments when your heart is really beating, it’s important to keep calm,” Baerbock told reporters. She noted that the G7 has been “a powerhouse … for freedom, for our common understanding of peace.”

Rubio faces allies as tariffs take hold

On tariffs, Rubio said G7 partners should understand that these are a “policy decision” by Trump to protect American competitiveness.

“I think it is quite possible that we could do these things and at the same time deal in a constructive way with our allies and friends and partners on all the other issues that we work together on,” Rubio had told reporters on Wednesday. “And that’s what I expect out of the G7 and Canada.”

Asked if he expected a difficult reception from his counterparts, Rubio brushed the question aside: “I don’t know, should I be? I mean, they’ve invited us to come. We intend to go. The alternative is to not go. I think that would actually make things worse, not better.”

The agenda for the G7 meeting included discussions on China and the Indo-Pacific; Ukraine and Europe; stability in the Americas; the Middle East; maritime security; Africa; and China, North Korea, Iran and Russia.

Discussing peace in Ukraine

Rubio and Trump's national security adviser, Mike Waltz, had been in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, earlier in the week securing a potentially huge win for the administration — a possible 30-day ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war, an issue that galvanized the G7 since even before the conflict began. Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff arrived Thursday in Russia for talks with officials on the proposal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he agrees in principle with the U.S. proposal but that the terms need to be worked out, emphasizing it should pave the way to lasting peace.

“So the idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it,” Putin said at a news conference in Moscow. “But there are issues that we need to discuss, and I think that we need to discuss it with our American colleagues and partners.”

There was no immediate comment from G7 officials to Putin's comments, although participants were expected to be cautiously optimistic.

Still, Trump's apparent desire to draw Putin back into the fold — including saying he would like to see Russia rejoin the group to restore it to the G8 — continues to alarm G7 members. Russia was thrown out of the G8 after it seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Among international groupings, the G7 — whose members, with the exception of Japan, are all NATO allies — had been the toughest on Russia.

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Associated Press writers Rob Gillies in Toronto, Jill Lawless in London, and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

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