https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tasker-freeland-nafta-talks-trump-1.4801706 Canada's chief trade negotiator, Steve Verheul, and a team from the Prime Minister's Office, including Trudeau's principal secretary, Gerald Butts, took an early-morning flight from Ottawa to Washington D.C.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tasker-freeland-nafta-talks-trump-1.4801706 Mexico's ambassador to Canada said his country is prepared to go it alone with the Americans if Canada and the U.S. are not able to resolve some lingering bilateral issues, namely the extension of intellectual property (IP) rights and a dispute settlement mechanism.
When American based companies in sectors that really matter ( like IT ) look for talent they often look to Canada not to Mexico. We aren't going to explode into waves of new violence and social issues if we encounter short term trading issues. Mexico truly is in trouble if it loses significant business. Canada is fine for many years, and the US still imports all sort of stuff from Canada at below world market prices. Politically, Trump is dead in the water if enough people lose jobs due to reduced trade and the stock market corrects severely to reflect much lower profits ( companies not only lose a decent consumer market but they have to redo their supply chains at extreme short term cost ).
Especially because most major U.S. corporations get a majority of their profits from business done out of the country than in.
I'm waiting for Amazon to put their second HQ in Toronto as a way to get around the restrictive and uncertain skilled labor visa restrictions in the U.S. As a nice bonus for Bezos it gives a big middle finger to Trump, but it would actually be a sound business decision given the current direction of the U.S. and I'd like to think Bezos isn't nearly as small minded as dear leader.
Amazon buys solar and wind for most of their power and that's potentially even less in Canada because no Trump solar panel tariffs. The electricity usage for a HQ office building doesn't move the needle anyway, their existing Canadian data centers already use orders of magnitude more, plus electricity costs more in many of the major U.S. metros under consideration than Toronto for a commercial tarif. I've just completed transfer pricing for a Canadian subsidiary of a U.S. corporation so I can provide a little bit of first-hand knowledge on the tax situation. Again, most taxes are based on where the transaction happens, so they wouldn't really incur much if any additional corporate tax burden from a Canadian HQ. They would have to pay somewhat higher taxes on salaries, but again contrary to what the right wing folks in the U.S. who haven't ever actually run businesses scream about, that doesn't move the needle enough to play a significant role in a siting decision of an actual business and is dwarfed by things like employee cost of living and quality of life.
Canada's Trudeau says NAFTA deal possible by Friday https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/29/canadas-trudeau-says-nafta-deal-possible-by-friday.html
According to Vegas oddsmaker Bovada North Virginia leads as most likely site of HQ2 and Tronto (as I've heard Canucks occasionally pronounce it) is 5th.