Canada continues to do a lot of business with Washington state, according to the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. That is despite escalating trade tensions with the Trump Administration.
Canadian Ambassador Mark Wiseman said his country’s relationship with Washington state continues to be positive. At an event on Tuesday in Seattle hosted by the Association of Washington Business, he said the country buys about $10 billion of goods and services a year, and that Canada wants that to grow.
“Canadian companies employ over 30,000 workers here in Washington. We are buying products,” he said. “We just want more of that to take place across the border.”
Wiseman’s remarks came on the same day that the Trump administration instated bans on Canadian goods such as alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motorcycles.
Over the summer, President Trump imposed 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion worth of imports from that country, claiming that Canada discriminates against U.S. producers. Canada countered with its own tariffs, which has led to Trump’s most recent response, barring a list of Canadian goods.
Wiseman said Trump’s tariffs are having big impacts on certain parts of Canada’s economy, including the auto industry and manufacturers of steel and aluminum.
Canada has a trade agreement with the U.S. that runs for another decade. Called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, it allowed most goods to cross each country’s borders duty free. Trump pushed for the deal during his first term in office.
“We want to see it implemented fairly and properly, and get back to business on both sides of the border,” Wiseman said.
The back-and-forth tariffs are also hurting businesses in the U.S.
In Washington state, the agriculture sector has borne the brunt of these tariffs, since customers can choose to buy goods and services from other parts of the world, according to the Washington Council on International Trade.
That is already happening in Canada, where Prime Minister Mark Carney said he wants to help his country become less reliant on goods from the U.S. To do that, Canada is looking to India, Japan and European countries to build new trade relationships.
At the event on Tuesday, Wiseman sought to ease concerns over what that means for relations with the U.S.
“Don’t read diversification as being at the cost of our relationship with the U.S.,” he said, adding that he’s “confident that our trading relationship is going to continue to expand.”
