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 G7 meeting in Quebec.
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 Justin 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 J 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.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
