Negotiators were taking ‘important steps’ before Trump halted talks, ambassador says

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.”

Trump abruptly called off negotiations in a late-night social media post last Thursday over an advertisement by the Ontario government that uses former U.S. president Ronald Reagan's own words to send an anti-tariff message to American audiences.

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.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced that his government would pull the ad that appeared to set Trump off last week — but not before it was played over the weekend, including on American networks during the World Series.

Initially, Ottawa had hoped to cut a broad trade and security deal that would come with tariff relief. Expectations were lowered in recent weeks, with efforts largely focused on certain sectoral tariffs.

The Globe and Mail reported last week, citing unnamed sources, that a deal on aluminum and steel could be reached as early as the APEC summit — though Carney downplayed that report.

“We are in ongoing discussions with the Americans, and I wouldn't overplay it," Carney told reporters in Ottawa last week when asked about the Globe story.

Hillman told the committee that talks in recent weeks had been focused on steel and aluminum but that wasn’t necessarily to the exclusion of other industries.

“The United States expressed the desire to start with a few issues and try to move those along, while not jettisoning the others, but maybe accelerating conversations on some of them first and then moving the others in afterwards,” Hillman said.

“What maybe has been lost in the way that this has been characterized or discussed publicly is that it is one [sector] to the exclusion of others. It is more a question of sequencing — at least in the U.S.’s eyes — and the U.S. is saying, ‘We would like to sequence it this way.’”