U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra on Thursday said Canada’s response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and rhetoric has not been “constructive” toward securing a new trade and security deal with the U.S.
Speaking at a lunch event hosted by the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, Hoekstra said the phrase “elbows up,” used by Canadian politicians and the public to protest the U.S., is “anti-American” and took issue with the phrase “trade war” to describe the economic tension.
“It is very, very difficult to find Canadians who are passionate about the American-Canadian relationship,” he said. “You ran a campaign where it was anti-American, ‘elbows up,’ ‘me too.’ It was an anti-American campaign. That has continued. That’s disappointing.
“If you think that America is at war with Canada? No, we’re not at war. If the president thought he was at war with Canada, you’d see a whole different kind of relationship … than what you’re seeing now. You would not have the best tariff rate in the world.”
Hoekstra said it was only Canada that has treated the situation as a trade war.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne on Wednesday said it’s “sad” that the U.S. “turned its back on Canada,” forcing it to look to new markets for international trade and investment.
Champagne also said “a lot of the costs” the country must carry in the upcoming federal budget are “directly related to the trade war that has been imposed on Canada.”
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The U.S. ambassador said Thursday that such comments are “a bad place to go.”
“If that’s where your government wants to go, and they’re going to treat these negotiations and the relationship with America as a war, that is a decision that a sovereign country has the right to make. We’re not anywhere close to that,” he said.
Speaking to reporters after the event, Hoekstra added Champagne’s comments were “not constructive” in moving negotiations with the Trump administration along and rejected them outright.
“I don’t think we’ve turned our back on Canada,” he said.
He also called suggestions that Trump has become an unreliable negotiator with his consistent changes to tariff policy “totally invalid.”
“Who stuck with USMCA and created a carve-out, put no tariffs on USMCA components just as the agreement that he signed,” Hoekstra asked, using another name for the Canada-United States Mexico Agreement on free trade (CUSMA).
“Who put tariffs on USMCA products? The Canadians did. The Canadians did. Donald Trump, our negotiating team, stuck to the agreement. It was the Canadians that have created some questions.”
Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico, which he justified over concerns about cross-border fentanyl trafficking, initially covered all goods when the policy was announced in March. He amended the order two days later to carve out CUSMA-compliant goods until April 2, when he made the exemption permanent.
Ottawa responded with multiple rounds of tariffs on a total $60 billion worth of U.S. goods that would otherwise be covered under CUSMA. Provinces and territories have also retaliated by pulling American alcohol from liquor stores, urging Canadians not to travel to the U.S., and cancelling American business contracts.
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican who co-sponsored a joint resolution to end the tariffs on Canada, said this week that exports of U.S. distilled spirits to Canada have declined by about 62 per cent since Trump launched his trade war, and tourism from Canada to the U.S. is down by 33.9 per cent.
Prime Minister Mark Carney this month lifted Canada’s retaliatory tariffs in a bid to restart stalled negotiations toward a new trade and security deal with the U.S. The talks resumed days after Carney’s announcement.
“Hallelujah,” Hoekstra said in reaction to the move Thursday.
“We’re thrilled that they are no longer tariffing. It kicks off the review of CUSMA, USMCA, on a much better foot.”
Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are inching toward a major review of the trade pact due to start next July, with preparations for the talks taking place behind the scenes. The U.S. started public consultations this week, and Ottawa said it will do the same “in the near future.”
Hoekstra said on Tuesday that the Trump administration had hoped to reach a “much bigger” deal with Canada that would go beyond renegotiating the current free trade pact, by expanding the relationship in areas such as defence, automotive and energy.
“It’s obvious, at least at this point in time, that that’s not going to happen,” Hoekstra said at an event put on by the Canadian International Council in Ottawa.
He again appeared to cast doubt on that deal being secured while speaking to reporters on Thursday.
“I’m just saying we were ready for a bigger deal, which the president and the prime minister talked about the first time they got together, and what we have done with a number of our trading partners to date, and we have not been able to achieve it,” he said.
Yet during the Halifax Chamber of Commerce event, the ambassador said he was “genuinely optimistic” that a deal could be reached.
“You may say it took too long to get here, it was too painful to get here, because Washington and Ottawa don’t work on the same timeframe that each and all of you do,” he said. “But I think we will get there.”
— With files from The Canadian Press
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