Canada’s first ministers and finance ministers are working together to prepare for Donald Trump’s new presidency, says Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy, with Ontario using its yearlong leadership of the provinces’ roundtable to build unity.

“They’re our greatest friend and we’re their greatest ally, [but] they are dealing with a lot of other powers around the world,” Bethlenfalvy said of the United States in a meeting with the editorial board of The Logic.

That means Canadian leaders need to coordinate their approaches to contacts in the U.S. and make the most of precious chances to play up the dangers of Trump’s promised universal tariffs for economic activity on both sides of the border. “You’ve got to have a consistent plan of engagement with them,” he said during the meeting on Monday.

Canada has been wooing business leaders, members of Congress, and state and local officials for months, reminding them that Canada is a major supplier to and customer of American industries. Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s public congratulatory message to the president-elect was almost entirely about those exchanges.

It’s a joint effort despite political differences between, for instance, his own Progressive Conservatives and the governing federal Liberals, Bethlenfalvy said: “In times like this—and we’ve done it before—you take off your partisan hat and you put on your Team Canada hat.”

Last week, Ford wrote publicly that unless Mexico cuts back its dealings with China, Canada and the U.S. ought to negotiate a new two-country trade deal that excludes the third member of the current continental trade pact. Freeland publicly agreed with him shortly after.

Ontario knows which country is more important to it, said Bethlenfalvy.

“Our No. 1 trading partner, unequivocally, is the United States,” he said. “Of course, we’ll work with Mexico and others, but our primary interest is to make sure that as discussions and relationships are built, that the United States understands very clearly our position that those vital interests and those jobs are vitally important.”

On the flip side, he said, “we have some real cards to play.” Those include supplying critical minerals and oil. And, he added, since Canada doesn’t have a big trade imbalance with the U.S., he doesn’t think Canada is Trump’s target, anyway.

Ontario happens to chair the Council of the Federation—where the 13 provinces and territories work on common issues—at the moment, he said, and that group “allows for a lot more dialogue among provinces and then in coordination with the federal government.”

Bethlenfalvy said Ontario has been courting the United States since his Progressive Conservatives took office in 2018 and declared the province “open for business.”

“It’s about relationships, and you’ve got to tell your story,” he said. One challenge, for the moment, is that it’s not yet clear whom Canada needs to be telling its story to: Trump hasn’t yet named top economic officials for his incoming administration, he said.

Former U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer is widely expected to play a role—maybe a major one—but Trump hasn’t named anybody to Lighthizer’s old job or to cabinet posts at the departments of Commerce and the Treasury. Sen. Marco Rubio is reported to be Trump’s pick to lead American diplomacy as secretary of state, but Trump himself hasn’t said so publicly.

In an Ottawa appearance on U.S. election day a couple of weeks ago, Ford said that interdependence makes Canada vulnerable but it also gives us some leverage.

Last time Trump was in office, for instance—starting in June 2018, when Ford was newly elected in Ontario—his administration put a tariff on imports of Canadian steel and aluminum. Canada retaliated, with Ford’s support.

“I went public and said, ‘Tariff everything. Everything. I don’t care if it’s popcorn,’” Ford recounted. When senators and congresspeople and governors are all screaming about harm to their states’ businesses, even Trump has to listen, Ford said.

“I think that lasted four weeks,” he said.

The reality was a much more gruelling and expensive lesson: although Trump did relent on the metals tariffs, it took nearly a year, and the federal government put up nearly $2 billion in supports for the industry in the meantime.