Freeland silent on Lighthizer meeting
Foreign affairs minister had ‘check-in’ with U.S. trade leader ahead of NAFTA talks
OTTAWA— Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland met unexpectedly with Donald Trump’s trade czar out of the public eye Wednesday, a meeting her office described as “cordial and constructive.”
Freeland met with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer at his office at the end of the afternoon on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. — a meeting his office confirmed but refused to discuss in any detail.
The last time Freeland met with Lighthizer, there was no love lost.
It was at the conclusion of the Montreal round of NAFTA talks in January, and the two publicly traded barbs.
The secret meeting on Valentine’s Day in Washington, D.C., comes in a week when official comments on both sides of the border offered strikingly different views of what’s going on behind closed doors in the bid to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement. On Monday, Trump said Canada “does not treat us right in terms of the farming and crossing the borders.” On Tuesday, the president complained further that “Canada has treated us very, very unfairly when it comes to lumber and timber. Very unfairly.”
Lighthizer at a White House meeting on Tuesday told the president and senators that he believes “we’re making real headway” at the NAFTA negotiating table — and that a deal was “within reach.”
On the other hand, in Ottawa the same day, Canada’s chief negotiator Steve Verheul said publicly Canada saw “limited progress” at the NAFTA table partly because there is not enough time between negotiating rounds, because the U.S. has made hardline demands — a sunset clause, 50-per-cent American content in autos, limiting Canadian and Mexican access to U.S. procurement contracts and other issues — and because U.S. negotiators seemed hamstrung by White House expectations.
Freeland’s office was tight-lipped Wednesday about the state of the NAFTA discussions after the Freeland-Lighthizer meeting, except to say the two met at the USTR office, and they did not sit down to a dinner together.
The secret meeting comes in a week when official comments on both sides of the border offered strikingly different views of what’s going on behind closed doors
Freeland travelled to Washington, D.C., on short notice in advance of the next round of talks to begin in Mexico City, Feb. 25 to March 5. It was billed only as a trip to meet with “key representatives.”
Freeland spokesperson Adam Austen described the meeting as “just a bilateral check-in,” saying that it had not been announced publicly because it “came together at the last minute.”
“We’re not going to get into detail” about what was discussed, said Austen.
He said he did not know if they discussed the president’s public comments, but Austen said the ministers’ meeting “bodes well” for the next round, adding only that it was “building on progress made in the last round.”
But that progress is, as Verheul described, extremely limited to closing or coming close to finalizing only a few minor chapters in any potential new deal.
Austen said Freeland is continuing to stay in touch with “both” her American and Mexican counterparts.