Prime Minister Justin Trudeau received a warm personal welcome Wednesday as he sat down with influential American businesswomen and congressional lawmakers.
But Trudeau's biggest test of the day remained at the White House, where he was scheduled to meet with Donald Trump in hopes of fortifying his relationship with the famously mercurial U.S. president at an especially crucial time in Canada-U.S. relations.
Dominating the talks will be the North American Free Trade Agreement, with a fourth round of talks underway in nearby Arlington, Va.
Trump has repeatedly intimated he'd prefer ripping up the deal to renegotiating it, casting a pall over the talks, although the U.S. trade representative suggested in a statement Wednesday that meaningful progress had already been made.
Trudeau goes into his meeting with Trump after discussions with the House of Representatives influential Ways and Means committee, one of two bodies of U.S. lawmakers helping negotiators put forward the U.S. positions on trade.
This afternoon, @cafreeland & I met with the House Committee on Ways and Means in DC to talk about the benefits of Canada-US trade. pic.twitter.com/irJftqCp3k
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) October 11, 2017
He joined the committee to warm applause and expressions of optimism about the deal from both the committee's Republican chair and the ranking Democrat member.
The committee is dedicated to making sure the negotiations are successful, said Rep. Kevin Brady, the committee chair, who asked for Trudeau's help in keeping an open mind.
"We all want this agreement to be a model for future trade deals," Brady said.
The NAFTA talks were to kick off with a discussion of government procurement, already a thorny subject — U.S. negotiators suggested during the last round in Ottawa that they want to limit Canadian and Mexican access to U.S. projects.
Starting the day with a roundtable in Washington, DC, talking about solutions to the challenges women & girls face every day with #WomenOne. pic.twitter.com/T6quqtDJR6
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) October 11, 2017
From there, discussions will move onto developing remedies for trade disputes and the contentious subject of agriculture on Saturday.
Trudeau told Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women gala on Tuesday night he sees room to not only modernize the deal, but to make it more progressive as well.
"Putting progressive elements into trade deals — labour protections, environmental protections — actually helps us make the case for trade and reassure people that the benefits of trade will be distributed more fairly and not just to the small number of people who've always benefited from it in the past," he said.
He returned to those themes Wednesday during an earlier roundtable discussion with two organizations devoted to empowering women and girls around the world. Participants included senior female executives with Google and Twitter, organizations including the Nike Foundation, McKinsey and JPMorgan Chase and Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post.
Trudeau noted the diverse backgrounds and strengths in the group, but said they too often work in isolation.
"We don't necessarily convene a broad enough group to reach out beyond where we can touch ourselves and being able to break down these silos and pull people together is really important," he said.
Why am I raising my kids to be feminists? I answered this question for #DayoftheGirl in @marieclaire: https://t.co/tdVW9fylYB
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) October 11, 2017
"How we empower women and girls around the world is going to make the defining difference in whether we make it as a 21st century species or not."
