Canada’s ambassador to the United States said her team in Washington has continued to communicate with American officials since U.S. President Donald Trump said he was terminating trade talks.
“I have had exchanges here with a number of my contacts in the administration. My team has also been having contacts,” said Kirsten Hillman, who appeared by video in front of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade in Ottawa Wednesday.
Hillman, who also serves as Canada’s top negotiator with the U.S., said over the past five days her people have been in touch with officials in the White House, the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Energy.
The conversations are not expressly on the trade negotiations, she added, because people have been advised by their leader that’s “on pause right now.”
Trump said he was calling off trade negotiations with Canada last week over an ad paid for by the Ontario government that used clips of former president Ronald Reagan saying tariffs damage economies. Trump also threatened to add an additional 10 per cent tariff on Canadian goods — although it remains unclear if or how those duties would go ahead.
The president and Prime Minister Mark Carney appeared cordial as they sat down to dinner together in South Korea on Wednesday after Trump had said he wasn’t looking to meet with the Canadian leader as they both attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit this week.
Hillman said Trump and Carney had exchanges while in Asia, demonstrating that communication channels were still open at the highest level.
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Trump heaped praise on Carney during a visit to the White House earlier this month and said the prime minister would leave the meeting happy. While a deal never materialized, Hillman said trade negotiations became more productive.
“We have had much more intensive discussions, essentially almost daily, for a couple of weeks,” Hillman said.
Trump boosted tariffs on Canada to 35 per cent in August but those duties do not apply to goods compliant under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade, known as CUSMA. Hillman said that CUSMA exemption means a majority of Canadian exports to the United States are tariff-free.
Trump’s separate tariffs under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 are hammering Canada’s steel, aluminum, automobile, lumber and copper industries.
Hillman said the trade talks had focused on finding an off-ramp for those sectoral duties. She said they “were trying to work out sort of the contours of what a first step in an agreement between Canada and the United States could look like.”
“We still had gaps in our … different perceptions of what would make a good deal. We weren’t there yet but we were working on narrowing those and … we had certainly succeeded in narrowing some of them,” Hillman said.
“There’s still work to do. I don’t want to suggest we were on the verge of an arrangement, but we had made more progress, in my opinion, in those weeks than we had in a very long time.”
Canada is prepared to pick up trade talks once the U.S. is ready, Hillman said.
“This relationship is strong. It’s resilient. There’s so much that we are doing together,” she said. “The channels of communication are open and we will get back to it. You know why we’ll get back to it, because it’s in the interests of Americans and it’s in the interests of Canadians.”
The Canadian ambassador took multiple questions from senators about the Canada-U.S. relationship that’s been rattled by Trump’s massive tariff agenda and repeated threats to make Canada a U.S. state.
Hillman said Canada is not the sole target of Trump’s duties — the United States has fundamentally changed its approach to trade with all countries.
In response to a question about whether the Trump administration is looking to destroy the Canadian automobile industry, Hillman said she does not believe that to be true based on technical conversations she’s had with her American counterparts. She said the U.S. is aware that Canada is a big customer for the American automobile industry.
Canada is also preparing ahead of a mandated CUSMA review next year. Hillman said the priorities are to keep the review as targeted as possible, seek a prompt renewal, secure preferential market access and a stable and predictable trade environment for Canadian businesses.
“We are now approaching this review process and we are doing so in a clear-eyed and pragmatic manner,” she said.
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