U.S. treasury secretary 'couldn't be happier' with Ottawa visit, even as tests loom: Chris Hall

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin knows a thing or two about box office draws as the owner of a company that financed such blockbusters as The Devil Wears Prada and Avatar.

On Friday, Donald Trump's top economic adviser played to a full house of Canadian cabinet ministers during a visit to Ottawa — the first by a treasury secretary in a decade and the first bilateral visit Mnuchin has made since getting the job, back in February.

If he and Finance Minister Bill Morneau had a script for their wrap-up news conference, it called for them to play the lead roles in one of those feel-good, buddy movies.

"We have a very close relationship with Canada and we will continue to do so," Mnuchin told reporters. "I couldn't be happier with what was a very productive trip."

Morneau was equally effusive, saying the day-long visit "developed and enhanced an already very successful relationship."

That's fair enough. No economic or political relationship in the world is stronger than the Canada-U.S. bond. But it's equally fair to say this relationship is being put to a severe test.

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Negotiations to tweak, modernize or overhaul NAFTA are about to begin. New duties have been imposed on Canadian softwood lumber. And just an hour or so before Mnuchin and Morneau met reporters, the U.S. International Trade Commission announced it will continue investigating a complaint from Boeing that Canada's Bombardier is using unfair subsidies to sell its C-series passenger jets at cut-rate prices in the U.S.

Mnuchin is also the guy responsible for bringing in Trump's tax reform package, which among other things calls for a dramatic cut in corporate income taxes.

He was asked, several times what all of this says about the relationship, starting with NAFTA.

"Whatever we do, our objective is to make sure it is positive for the U.S. economy and the Canadian economy."

On what Trump meant when he said Canada is not playing fair on dairy, lumber and energy:

"I don't want to go into the specifics because we are having discussions, but again, I'm very comfortable that the issues that we have on trade, that the conversations we have today…. that we're very focused on an outcome that's good for American workers and good for the Canadian economy."

On the uncertainty being created by Trump's economic policies, uncertainty prompting many Canadian companies to delay decision on when and where to invest:

"I can assure you that nothing is higher on my priority list [than] getting tax reform done this year," he said. "It is critical for economic growth, not only in our country but throughout the world."

Nothing in those answers is likely to give much comfort to the 25 Canadian business leaders who sat down with Mnuchin and Morneau.

The treasury secretary also met privately with Morneau and a half dozen key cabinet ministers, including Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland who this week set out a new foreign policy direction for Canada that's motivated, in part, by what Freeland referred to a friend and ally that has come "to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership."

Mnuchin, in addition to being one of a very few Trump cabinet members to come to Canada, is also a personal friend of the president's. He served as the finance chair of the president's  2016 campaign.

It's one of the reasons so many Canadian cabinet ministers, representing public safety, transport, industry and innovation, were asked to attend.

"It was valuable for him to hear — from all of us — on our perspectives on the Canada-U.S. relationship," Freeland said in an interview on CBC Radio's The House.

"It's not breaking any confidence that I heard from the treasury secretary, an appreciation of the balanced and mutually beneficial economic relationship the U.S. has from Canada. That is what they tell us in private. That's what they say in public. And it has the benefit of being true."

The trouble for Canadian officials is that Trump, as Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said just this week, "is new at this. New at government." That makes him unpredictable. It makes it hard for America's friends and allies to rely on what he says on any given day, since the message has so often changed.

So Freeland, Morneau and their colleagues are taking every chance they get to press the administration, members of Congress, governors and mayors south of the border on the importance of the relationship, the special bonds, and the absolute economic imperative of keeping the flow of goods and services moving across the border unimpeded.

"We are trying to start out with a frame that we're going to improve our mutual advantage," Morneau said at the end of the day, still sticking to the buddy movie script.

"That's critically important. I think Canadians stand absolutely behind us in knowing that's possible."