Prime minister’s face-to-face meeting with Trump a resounding success The Record’s view,

Mission accomplished. Justin Trudeau’s first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump at the White House on Monday was a resounding success.

Thanks to meticulous planning and a dash of personal charm, the prime minister achieved everything he and Canadians could have hoped for.

He established a constructive, respectful and cordial, if not overtly warm, relationship with the erratic new president.

Best of all, he won from Trump explicit recognition that the Canadian-American economic connection is vital to both countries and that Canada will be treated differently from Mexico, which could soon be hit with crippling border taxes.

Beyond this, Trudeau flew into Washington D.C., spent half a day with Trump and then flew home without anything truly awful happening.

Considering how unpredictable this one-man-wreckingball of a president can be, considering that in recent weeks Trump rudely hung up the phone on Australia’s prime minister and offended Mexico’s president so grievously that Enrique Peña Nieto cancelled his visit to Washington, this is worth celebrating.

Trudeau wisely accentuated the areas where he and Trump agree — trade, security, energy and jobs for the middle classes. Just as shrewdly, the prime minister avoided straying too far into terrain where he and the thin-skinned Trump would disagree — refugees, immigration and climate change.

Trump’s ego as much as Trumpian policy is the beating heart of this presidency. While the “sunny ways,” globalist, Liberal prime minister is in so many ways the opposite of this “America-First” conservative, Trudeau managed to create a personal rapport with him.

Giving the president a photograph of Trump with Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, at a banquet in New York City in 1981 appealed to a man in love with his own face. It also helped the two leaders connect.

This burgeoning relationship was further advanced at a roundtable meeting between leading Canadian businesswomen Trudeau brought to Washington and several of their American counterparts. Sitting next to Trudeau at this meeting was one of the president’s closest, most trusted and influential advisers — daughter Ivanka Trump.

Some Canadians have criticized the PM for not denouncing Trump’s attempts to ban immigrants from seven, Muslimmajority countries as well as all refugees from entering the U.S. This is unfair, considering that Trudeau clearly, though diplomatically, reaffirmed during his Washington stay that Canada welcomes refugees.

It would have been foolish, as well as uncivil for Trudeau to say more. He was a foreign guest. Trump was hosting him on home turf. Moreover, with Canadian exports to the U.S. accounting for 23 per cent of this country’s GDP while American exports north of the border make up just two per cent of their economy, we need them more than they need us.

Some will dismiss this as a cynical brand of realpolitik on the prime minister’s part. In fact, while Trudeau has often been criticized for getting into trouble after shooting from the lip, on Monday he was the epitome of a principled, pragmatic statesman.

As a result, Trump wants to build “bridges,” not walls, with Canada. Well played Mr. Prime Minister.