U.S. president called off trade talks with Canada over Ontario’s anti-tariff ad
Canadian and American trade negotiators were starting to put ideas about a potential agreement on paper before U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly ended trade talks last week, Canada’s ambassador in Washington says.“We were trying to work out the contours of what a first step in an agreement between Canada and the United States could look like,” Ambassador Kirsten Hillman told the Senate foreign affairs committee on Wednesday. “We were exchanging views on that and we were putting those views on paper.”
Hillman was asked at the committee hearing where talks were headed before the sudden halt. While she indicated progress had been made since Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to Washington earlier this month, she said some sticking points remained.
“I don’t want to suggest that we were on the verge of an arrangement. But we had made more progress, in my opinion, in those weeks than we had in a very long time,” Hillman said. Earlier on Wednesday, Carney and Trump came face-to-face for the first time since the president called the talks off. The two were seated across the table and acknowledged each other during a toast at a dinner ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit (APEC) but appeared to have little engagement otherwise
Source: globalnews.ca/news
