Canadian officials changed course under pressure from tariffs from the world's two largest economies. In exchange, China agreed to reduce import taxes on certain food products, such as canola and lobsters. Despite repeated statements from Trump that he wants to repatriate automobile manufacturing, a sector long integrated on both sides of the US-Canada border, Hoekstra stated that Canada is not one of the main concerns for US officials in their attempt to reform global trade relations. "It is not inevitable" that automobile factories will move to the US, said Hoekstra, a former Michigan congressman, the heart of the American auto industry. "Canada is not our problem with automobiles. And then we have to see what we are going to do with China, because that is the biggest threat."
The ambassador also expressed his disappointment with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's approach to Arctic security, stating that Carney's recent announcement of a C$32 billion (US$23 billion) investment in the region, followed by a trip to Norway to hold security talks with Nordic nations, was done in a way that seemed to marginalize the United States. "We don't intervene in that?", asked Hoekstra. The United States will not allow Chinese electric vehicles coming from Canada to enter its market, according to President Donald Trump's ambassador in Ottawa following the agreement reached in January in which Prime Minister Mark Carney reduced tariffs on those vehicles. "Those cars can come from China, enter Canada, but they are not going to cross the border into the United States," said Pete Hoekstra in an interview with the Canadian outlet Rebel News.
