Influential leader of Canada's Ontario province seeks Trump, Musk meeting: US 'needs us like we need them'

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : Ford, who ran a Toronto-based family business, Deco Labels & Flexible Packaging, before entering municipal politics as a city councilor in 2010, considers Trump "a shrewd operator" and "a smart businessperson.
51% : BEING THE 51ST STATE'In 2012, the premier and his late brother, Rob, who was mayor of Toronto at the time, met Trump, along with his daughter, Ivanka, when they were in the city to open the former Trump International Hotel and Tower, now unaffiliated with The Trump Organization and known as The St. Regis Toronto.
49% : He would like to have a face-to-face meeting with Trump and said he has reached out to U.S. senators and governors to make that happen.
43% : Ford said the 25% tariff against Canada, which Trump plans to implement on his first day in office on Jan. 20, would hurt millions of American and Canadian workers.
43% : Ford said Trump "doesn't realize" that Ontario is the U.S.'s third-largest trading partner, amounting to about US$344 billion in 2023, "split equally down the center.
42% : AFTER TRUDEAU EXITAt a Toronto news conference on Monday following Trudeau's resignation announcement, Ford chided Trump with a "counteroffer" to his Canada-as-a-51st state idea.
38% : A sit-down with SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk - whom Trump appointed to co-lead, with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, the proposed "Department of Government Efficiency" - is also on Ford's wish-list.
33% : He said Trump has not set his sights on such other U.S. allies as the United Kingdom and France, but "wants to target" the U.S.'s "closest friend," Canada.
28% : On Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social that "the United States can no longer suffer the massive Trade Deficits and Subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat.
21% : Doug Ford, a former businessman and conservative like Trump who has served as Ontario's 26th premier since 2018, told Fox News Digital in an interview that the president-elect's targeting Canada is both "crazy" and "ridiculous.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.