Carney setting the bar low for this meeting

Good morning from Washington, D.C. I'm J.P. Tasker, a reporter travelling with Carney for the high-stakes White House meeting today. This is a face-to-face that comes as bilateral relations are at their lowest point in decades and with a trade war raging.

Carney is setting the bar low — saying Canadians shouldn't expect to see any "white smoke," a nod to what will happen when a Pope is chosen in Rome, after this Oval Office sit-down.

Trump said yesterday he doesn't know why Carney is coming, a statement that seems hard to believe given what's been going on between the two countries. "I guess he wants to make a deal. Everybody does," he said.

Carney has some policy goals: discussing Trump's three-pronged approach to tariffs (the original "fentanyl" tariffs, the Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos and so-called "reciprocal" tariffs that haven't been applied to Canada); and starting the process of renegotiating a new comprehensive economic and security relationship, now that Carney says the last one is "over" after the president's broadsides.

Beyond that, Carney is surely looking to avoid an Oval Office ambush like the one Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy endured earlier this year. Experts we spoke to say the prime minister was likely well briefed on what to do if the meeting starts to go off the rails.