Washington — President Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Canada affirmed the nation’s sovereignty on Thursday amid the president’s repeated threats to make it a part of america.
“Canada is a sovereign state, sure,” Pete Hoekstra mentioned throughout his affirmation listening to when requested by Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware whether or not he agreed that Canada is an unbiased nation and that it “shouldn’t be even jokingly known as the 51st state.”
Hoekstra additionally mentioned that the 2 international locations “have an awesome historical past of working collectively.” He added that Mr. Trump’s priorities of “freer, fairer commerce” would “develop the enterprise relationship” with Canada.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump questioned the worldwide boundary between the U.S. and Canada, calling it an “synthetic line” that any person drew a long time in the past.
“Is mindless,” he mentioned.
This week, Mr. Trump imposed 25% tariffs on metal and aluminum imports from Canada and threatened to double the levies if the nation didn’t droop its new 25% surcharge on exports of electrical energy to a number of U.S. states.
Mr. Trump has justified the tariffs as defending U.S. pursuits, although the present commerce settlement with Canada was negotiated and signed by him throughout his first time period. The president urged that Canada ought to acquiesce to his requests for annexation to alleviate the financial stress.
“The one factor that is sensible is for Canada to develop into our cherished Fifty First State,” Mr. Trump wrote Tuesday. “This might make all Tariffs, and every thing else, completely disappear. Canadians’ taxes might be very considerably lowered, they are going to be safer, militarily and in any other case, than ever earlier than, there would now not be a Northern Border drawback, and the best and strongest nation within the World might be larger, higher and stronger than ever — And Canada might be a giant a part of that.”
