{"id":153639,"date":"2025-09-18T23:23:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T23:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/153639\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T23:23:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T23:23:16","slug":"canada-not-constructive-in-efforts-to-secure-u-s-trade-deal-envoy-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/153639\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada not \u2018constructive\u2019 in efforts to secure U.S. trade deal, envoy says"},"content":{"rendered":"

U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra<\/a> on Thursday said Canada\u2019s response to U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs<\/a> and rhetoric has not been \u201cconstructive\u201d toward securing a new trade and security deal with the U.S.<\/p>\n

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Speaking at a lunch event hosted by the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, Hoekstra said the phrase \u201celbows up,\u201d used by Canadian politicians and the public to protest the U.S., is \u201canti-American\u201d and took issue with the phrase \u201ctrade war\u201d to describe the economic tension.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is very, very difficult to find Canadians who are passionate about the American-Canadian relationship,\u201d he said. \u201cYou ran a campaign where it was anti-American, \u2018elbows up,\u2019 \u2018me too.\u2019 It was an anti-American campaign. That has continued. That\u2019s disappointing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think that America is at war with Canada? No, we\u2019re not at war. If the president thought he was at war with Canada, you\u2019d see a whole different kind of relationship \u2026 than what you\u2019re seeing now. You would not have the best tariff rate in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hoekstra said it was only Canada that has treated the situation as a trade war.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHoekstra \u2018genuinely optimistic\u2019 that Canada, U.S. can reach bilateral trade deal\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Finance Minister Fran\u00e7ois-Philippe Champagne on Wednesday said it\u2019s \u201csad\u201d that the U.S. \u201cturned its back on Canada,\u201d forcing it to look to new markets for international trade and investment.<\/p>\n

Champagne also said \u201ca lot of the costs\u201d the country must carry in the upcoming federal budget are \u201cdirectly related to the trade war that has been imposed on Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The U.S. ambassador said Thursday that such comments are \u201ca bad place to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s where your government wants to go, and they\u2019re 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\u2019re not anywhere close to that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Speaking to reporters after the event, Hoekstra added Champagne\u2019s comments were \u201cnot constructive\u201d in moving negotiations with the Trump administration along and rejected them outright.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve turned our back on Canada,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He also called suggestions that Trump has become an unreliable negotiator with his consistent changes to tariff policy \u201ctotally invalid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho stuck with USMCA and created a carve-out, put no tariffs on USMCA components just as the agreement that he signed,\u201d Hoekstra asked, using another name for the Canada-United States Mexico Agreement on free trade (CUSMA).<\/p>\n

\u201cWho 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe process of renegotiating CUSMA\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\tThe CUSMA review process is underway. Here\u2019s what to expect\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\tBank of Canada delivers 1st interest rate cut since March\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Mark Carney this month lifted Canada\u2019s 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\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHallelujah,\u201d Hoekstra said in reaction to the move Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled that they are no longer tariffing. It kicks off the review of CUSMA, USMCA, on a much better foot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are inching toward a major review of the trade pact due to start next July<\/a>, 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 \u201cin the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoekstra said on Tuesday that the Trump administration had hoped to reach a \u201cmuch bigger\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s obvious, at least at this point in time, that that\u2019s not going to happen,\u201d Hoekstra said at an event put on by the Canadian International Council in Ottawa.<\/p>\n

He again appeared to cast doubt on that deal being secured while speaking to reporters on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Yet during the Halifax Chamber of Commerce event, the ambassador said he was \u201cgenuinely optimistic\u201d that a deal could be reached.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou may say it took too long to get here, it was too painful to get here, because Washington and Ottawa don\u2019t work on the same timeframe that each and all of you do,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think we will get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 With files from The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra on Thursday said Canada\u2019s response to U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,8334,46,44,15635,714,2845],"class_list":{"0":"post-153639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-donald-trump-tariffs","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pete-hoekstra","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-u-s-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}