Will Biden's visit to Canada mend the rift between the two countries?

President Joe Biden is set to make an official visit to Canada in March, making it the first time the American head of state will visit his northern neighbor since taking office. But can the visit mend the rift that’s grown between the two countries since Donald Trump?

Officials on both sides of the border confirmed President Biden’s upcoming trip to Canada and it is not only Biden’s first visit to the country as President but also the first state visit by a sitting president in over six-and-a-half years. 

The relationship between Canada and the United States has been sitting on a rocky foundation ever since former President Donald Trump was elected in 2016. 

“Tensions over trade culminated in tariff battles during Trump's term in the White House,” according to the CBC’s Mark Gollum, “and his use of Twitter to blast the prime minister certainly put a chill on their relationship.”

The renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement into the current United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement was a major political battle that broke down relations and tested each country's leaders.

"This has been a battle, and battles sometimes make great friendships," former Trump commented just as the signing ceremony for the agreement began. 

But Canadian officials didn’t see a great friendship forming in the aftermath of difficult trade negotiations, especially after President Trump’s years of disparaging Canada and its leader on the world stage. 

In one partially charged rant during a 2019 NATO summit, Trump would unload on Trudeau, calling him “two-faced,” after a video of NATO leaders caught talking about the President on camera was released, according to a CNN article. 

"The relationship between the United States is so deep and so broad that you can't characterize it simply in terms of whether or not an individual president and a prime minister get along," David MacNaughton told the CBC in a 2021 article on the deteriorating relationship between the two countries. 

MacNaughton was Canada's ambassador to the U.S. from 2016 to 2019 and saw the worst of what the Trump years had to offer. 

"Having said that, I think it is of huge value if they do," MacNaughton added. "There are times when having that kind of close personal relationship can make a difference. So I think it's desirable, but it's not essential."

Biden may be hoping to reignite the personal relationship with his northern neighbor but the timing of his visit begs the question, why now?

President Biden has been in office for a little over two years now but restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic do explain why Biden didn’t visit before they were lifted. 

In February 2020, Members of Parliament from all parties unanimously agreed to invite President Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris to visit the country as soon as restrictions were lifted, according to a CTV News report. 

In a statement from the Whitehouse, the Biden administration noted that the visit “The two leaders discussed their commitments to take bold action to combat climate change and transform North America into a clean energy powerhouse.”

But Biden himself noted that “there’s a lot we’re going to be talking about,” which included not only clean energy but also supply chain management and the stabilization of Haiti. 

“More-substantive issues are on the agenda — and forward progress is in the offing, sources say, including on the cross-border dispute over the trusted-traveler program known as Nexus,” according to Bloomberg News.