OTTAWA—Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland met unexpectedly with Donald Trump’s trade czar out of the public eye Wednesday, a meeting her office described as “cordial and constructive.”Freeland met with United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer at his office at the end of the afternoon on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. – a meeting his office confirmed but refused to discuss in any detail.The last time Freeland met with Lighthizer there was no love lost.It was at the conclusion of the Montreal round of NAFTA talks in January, and the two publicly traded barbs.The secret meeting on Valentine’s Day in Washington, D.C. comes in a week when official comments on both sides of the border offered strikingly different views of what’s going on behind closed doors in the bid to rewrite the North American free trade deal.On Monday, Trump said Canada “does not treat us right in terms of the farming and crossing the borders.” On Tuesday, the president complained further that “Canada has treated us very, very unfairly when it comes to lumber and timber. Very unfairly.” Lighthizer at a White House meeting on Tuesday told the president and senators that he believes “we’re making real headway” at the NAFTA negotiating table – and that a deal was “within reach.”On the other hand, in Ottawa the same day, Canada’s chief negotiator Steve Verheul said publicly Canada saw “limited progress” at the NAFTA table partly because there is not enough time between negotiating rounds, because the U.S. has made hardline demands — a sunset clause, 50-per-cent American content in autos, on limiting Canadian and Mexican access to U.S. procurement contracts, and other issues — and because U.S. negotiators seemed hamstrung by White House expectations. Freeland’s office was tightlipped Wednesday about the state of the NAFTA discussion ...
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