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CANADA - Canadian diplomats are scrambling to mend a deteriorating relationship with its largest trading partner after senior US officials maintained the rhetorical barrage first unleashed by Donald Trump at the G meeting in 4uebec. Foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland will travel to Washington this week for a visit which will focus on trade talks but also attempt to reset relations between the two countries, which have been pushed to their lowest point in recent memory amid an increasingly bitter row over trade. In television appearances over the weekend, two senior Trump advisors said that -ustin Trudeau “stabbed the US in the back” after the prime minister spoke out against the US president’s aggressive trade policies. In an appearance on Fox News on Sunday, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro said “There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald - Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door.” The sharp escalation has shocked experts and fuelled worries of a devastating trade war, one which Canada, a middling economic power, would likely lose. “There have been moments of tension in various times in the history of Canada-US relations, but I’ve never seen or heard of anything like the type of language the US administration has used towards Canada,” said Roland Paris, an international affairs scholar and former advisor to Trudeau.
Canadian officials hoped the G summit in 4uebec over the weekend would be an opportunity to reset discussions around trade after Trump imposed punitive tariffs on the EU and Canada. But the gathering concluded on a sour note after Trudeau told reporters Canada “will not be pushed around”. Trump responded via social media calling the prime minister “very dishonest and weak”. “We have to prepare for the worst now,” said Colin Robertson, a former diplomat and head of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. “There’s a lot of damage control going on today and for the next few days,” he said. The US remains Canada’s largest trading partner, a relationship valued at 6 . bn, but Trump has claimed Canada has a trade surplus with the US, a statement not backed up by any evidence.
A recent report from the CD Howe Institute finds that the tariffs will cause significant economic pain in both countries Canada could lose as many as 6,000 jobs and a 0. GDP reduction, whereas the US would lose
, 00 jobs, but only a 0.0 disruption to the GDP. Last week, Canada introduced more than 6bn in retaliatory tariffs against the United States, meant to inflict targeted pain on politically vulnerable industries, such as whisky, orange juice, fro]en pi]]as and soy beans. (The Guardian)