“Hopefully she will share with Canadians that the view of the president is not the view of all the American people by far,” Sen. Bob Menendez said of the Canadian foreign minister. | Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images Lawmakers step in to restore U.S. ties to Canada after Trump-Trudeau spat

Senators are stepping in to shore up relations with the United States’ closest ally after President Donald Trump and his administration launched a war of words — and tariffs — against Canada.

Just days after White House trade adviser Peter Navarro asserted that there is “a special place in hell” for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the top Canadian diplomat visited Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet behind closed doors with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the request of Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the panel’s chairman.


The White House decision to impose steep duties on imports of steel and aluminum from Canada was the primary focus of the meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, which was planned before the events of the last week. The Trump administration justified those tariffs by saying the imports pose a national security threat to the United States — an explanation that Corker said generated “a lot of concern” among lawmakers.

“Most of us in the room shared the warmth that we have towards her country and the fact that we hope this thing will subside,” Corker told reporters after the meeting, which lasted roughly an hour.

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Lawmakers have “a different view” of the situation than the White House does, and they wanted to express to Freeland personally that they disagreed with the decision to impose tariffs, added Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the panel’s ranking member.

“Hopefully she will share with Canadians that the view of the president is not the view of all the American people by far, and not the view, I believe, of a majority in the United States Senate,” he said.

After the meeting, Freeland emphasized the importance of Canada’s close relationship with the United States. But she also stood firm on Ottawa’s decision to move forward with retaliatory tariffs on roughly $12 billion in U.S. goods, an action she noted would be taken “truly more in sorrow than anger.”

“We really, really value our relationship with the United States,” Freeland told reporters. “We really are confident that at the end of the day, common sense will prevail.”

Strained relations between the two countries over trade escalated over the weekend when Navarro blasted Trudeau, and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow echoed the sentiment, saying Trudeau “really kind of stabbed us in the back.”

Even so, a flurry of meetings between the two countries are taking place this week. Freeland, who will be in town through Thursday, also said that she has plans to meet with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer about NAFTA talks and other trade issues if their schedules allow, though nothing has yet been set in stone. And Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau was also in Washington on Wednesday to meet with his counterpart, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

At the end of the week, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue is headed up to Prince Edward Island to meet with his counterpart, Lawrence MacAulay, for a long-planned event designed to showcase cooperation in agriculture between the two nations.