TORONTO: Canada’s ambassador to the US for the last six years said Tuesday she’s resigning next year as the two major trading partners plan to review the free trade agreement.
Ambassador Kirsten Hillman said in a letter it is the right time to put in place someone who will oversee talks about the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that is up review in 2026.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Hillman “prepared the foundations for Canada in the upcoming review” of the agreement.
Carney noted she’s one of the longest-serving ambassadors to the United States in Canada’s history.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Hillman in 2017. She was the first woman appointed to the role.
Hillman helped lead the trade negotiations during US President Donald Trump’s first term and worked with US and Chinese officials to win the release of two Canadians detained in China.
Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for Canada-US trade, and Hillman had been leading trade talks with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
Trump ended trade talks with Carney in October after the Ontario provincial government ran an anti-tariff advertisement in the US, which upset the US president. That followed a spring of acrimony, since abated, over Trump’s insistence that Canada should become the 51st US state.
Asked this week when trade talks would resume, Trump said, “we’ll see.”
Canada is one of the most trade-dependent countries in the world, and more than 75 percent of Canada’s exports go to the US Most exports to the US are exempted by the USMCA trade agreement but that deal is up for review.
Carney aims to double non-US trade over the next decade.
About 60 percent of US crude oil imports are from Canada, and 85 percent of US electricity imports as well.
Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the US and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and investing in for national security.