President Joe Biden Travels To Canada To Discuss Trade, Energy

President Joe Biden traveled to Ottawa last week to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and to address Canada’s Parliament. In his meeting with the prime minister, President Biden discussed everything from North American trade and semiconductor policy to global warming, immigration, and rules for granting asylum.

In a fact sheet issued after the meeting, the White House highlighted several points of agreement that may be of interest to the industrial metals community, including the fact that:

• The two countries committed to identify opportunities to promote workforce training in priority areas like clean energy and skilled trades and to bring together key stakeholders from multinational companies, labor unions, state and provincial governments, and educational and training institutions to grow the pool of talent needed for critical supply chains.
• Both countries will propose regulations before this fall to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sectors and will work with other major energy importers and exporters to develop an internationally aligned approach to measure, monitor, report, and verify lifecycle methane and carbon dioxide emissions across the fossil energy value chain.
• The United States and Canada will undertake a joint technical review and assessment to examine whether the U.S.-Canada Air Quality Agreement (AQA) is meeting its goal to reduce transboundary air pollution, including from methane emissions. The review will also examine pollutants and issues not currently addressed by the AQA, such as particulate matter.
• The United States and Canada will coordinate efforts to develop secure and reliable North American nuclear fuel supply chains that do not rely on authoritarian-based suppliers and will build broader partnerships with longstanding allies and partners to ensure access to low enriched uranium and High-Assay Low Enriched Uranium.

In its fact sheet, the White House noted Canada is the United States’ largest trading partner, with nearly $2.6 billion in goods and services crossing the shared border.