President Donald Trump has taken a hard line with Mexico over a key 1993 free-trade agreement, but he evidently has a soft spot for Canada.

Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday mostly sang the praises of strong trade and other close ties between the two countries at their very first White House meeting.

The event stood in sharp contrast to a tense relationship between the U.S. and Mexico that led the Mexican president in January to cancel his own visit to Washington. Trump has railed about a high U.S. trade deficit with Mexico — $63 billion in 2016 — that he ascribes to “unfair” practices.

The less prickly relationship between the U.S. and Canada is no surprise. Although the two countries have had flareups from time to time over products such as lumber, they trade on far more equal terms given the similar profiles of their modern economies.

In 2015, the U.S. even ran a surplus with Canada for the first time since 1991.

Trump met with Trudeau as he moves forward on plans to renegotiate North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1993 deal that expanded trade between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The younger and more liberal Trudeau hopes to build a stable relationship with Trump to forestall major trade tensions despite disagreements on other issues such as immigration.

Also see live blog of Trump and Trudeau news conference

The talks appeared to go well. Both leaders stressed how deeply their economies are intertwined — the U.S. does more trade with Canada than any other country — and millions of jobs could be threatened on both sides of the border if a major rift developed.

Consider: More than 15% of all U.S. exports are shipped to Canada, directly supporting nearly 2 million American jobs, according to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Canada also had investments in the U.S. totaling some $269 billion as of 2015, supporting an additional 1.2 million workers.

Altogether, Canadian officials claim that 9 million American jobs are directly or indirectly tied to trade.

There’s another reason Trump should be satisfied. The United States in 2015 ran a $6.1 billion surplus with Canada, the first in 24 years. And it’s on track to report an even bigger surplus in 2016.

“It’s a much less severe situation,” Trump said after he met with Trudeau. He said trade rules with Canada will just be tweaked.

By contrast, the U.S. posted a trade deficit with Mexico of $63 billion last year.

The U.S. position with Canada looks even better if oil is stripped out of the equation. On that basis the United States has actually run a trade surplus with Canada in every year since 2008, government trade figures show.

The relationship with Canada has made a dramatic turnaround over the past decade chiefly for two reasons.

First, petroleum prices are much lower and the U.S. is producing far more oil and natural gas of its own amid a “fracking revolution.” Also, American exports of services such as financial advice, entertainment, and tourism have doubled in the past decade.

Still, Canada is naturally wary given Trump’s tough talk.

The nation’s foreign affairs minister last week warned of retaliation if the U.S. were to pass a border-adjustment tax that raised the cost of imports. Canada would have a lot to lose if Trump sought to substantially rewrite the rules on NAFTA in a way less favorable to America’s northern neighbor.

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The history of NAFTA shows why. After the pact took effect in 1994, Canadian exports to the U.S. soared, easily outpacing what Canada bought in return. The U.S. trade deficit with Canada, for example rose from a modest $4.4 billion in 1993 to a high-water mark of $71.7 billion in 2005.

Surging oil prices and more petroleum imports from Canada mostly drove the increase. The U.S. buys more oil from Canada than any other country.

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A sizable portion of the U.S. auto industry, however, also relocated north. Canada is now one of the biggest automakers in the world and it wants to protect that status, forestalling Trump’s effort to pressure American manufacturers to bring more jobs home.