Canada’s ambassador to the United States said on Sunday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was successful in getting US president-elect Donald Trump and key cabinet nominees to understand that lumping Canada in with Mexico over the flow of drugs and migrants into the US is unfair.
Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador in Washington, told Associated Press in an interview that Trudeau’s dinner with Trump on Friday was a very important step in trying to get Trump to back away from threatened tariffs on all products from the major American trading partner.
Hillman was at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and sat at an adjacent table to Trudeau and Trump.
Trump threatened to impose tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico if they do not stop what he called the flow of drugs and migrants across their borders. He said in a social media post last Monday he would impose a 25 per cent tax on all products entering the US from Canada and Mexico as one of his first executive orders.
Hillman said Trudeau asked to see Trump in person in a phone call on Monday and Trump invited him to dinner on Friday.
At the dinner, Hillman said the case was made to Trump that there is no comparison between the Canada-US border and Mexico-US border.
“The message that our border is so vastly different than the Mexican border was really understood,” Hillman said.
Hillman said the bulk of Friday night’s dinner centred around Trump’s border concerns. The ambassador said a priority of Trudeau’s was to point out the degree of difference.
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