Retiring Canadian Ambassador Kirsten Hillman, Image via CBS News / Screengrab
Donald Trump's destabilization of the economic relationship between the U.S. and Canada will have consequences that last longer than some might expect, with one retiring ambassador warning that Canadian businesses will not be coming back "anytime soon."
Kirsten Hillman has served as the Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. since 2020 and is set to step down from the role in the coming weeks. Her final year in office, per a Wednesday report from The Hill, has been "a roller coaster ride" amid Trump's return to office and subsequent assault on the longstanding relationship between the two neighboring nations.
Speaking to The Hill for the piece, Hillman noted that there had been tough negotiations when Trump was out of office, but that they were never conducted without a sense "that predictable and open trade among the three countries was good for America and with Canada and from Mexico.” With Trump back, however, such stability is "not the case today," with the president threatening to impose harsh tariffs on Canadian imports, musing about making the country the 51st state and engaging in an increasingly bitter feud with Prime Minister Mark Carney.
"I think Canadians took for granted that a strong, predictable, open relationship with Canada based on a sort of mutual benefit would always be something that Americans not only believed in, but would kind of fight for, and I think that that is no longer the case," Hillman said. "And I think Canadians have had a range of reactions to that, from sort of disbelief to anger to sadness."
While there might be hope for some that this tension will fade away once Trump is out of office, Hillman warned that Canadian business leaders will take a much longer time to start trusting the U.S. as a trade partner again.
"I don’t think there’s a sense that predictability is going to come back anytime soon," Hillman said. “Business leaders are telling me that they won’t go back, because… they won’t go back to putting too many eggs in one basket or expecting things to be as they always were, because they have come to realize that an administration can make changes, and that changes the entire business relationship that they have with the entire country."
She added: "[T]here are things that are being questioned today that haven’t been questioned before, and that is not just with Canada, but with allies around the world."