STEPHANOPOULOS: Your reaction to the Trump moves?
HILLMAN: Well, I mean, we’re – we’re disappointed, obviously. This is a disrupting and incredibly successful trading relationship. A trading relationship that was just renewed by President Trump in his last term when we renegotiated the NAFTA and brought our trade between our two countries to 99 percent tariff-free. So, we’re really disappointed and we’re hopeful that they don’t come into effect on Tuesday. We’re ready to continue to talk to the Trump administration about that. And in particular about all the work that we’re doing with them, and on our own with respect to the border and the issues that the president has said are at the core of this — this move.
STEPHANOPOULOS: What could happen between now and Tuesday that would prevent the tariffs from being implemented?
HILLMAN: Well, I mean, I think that – that is really something that is in the president’s hands. We have been meeting nonstop with his border officials. We’ve invested a billion dollars in furthering some of our equipment on the border, ensuring that we have the boots on the ground, working with the U.S. police service on joint training, joint exercises, going to China with them to deal with the precursor problem. So, we are – we are leaning in hard on this, and we feel that we’ve made incredible progress. You know, illegal crossings between Canada and the United States, as you said in your opener, are less than 1 percent of the crossings into the United States. But even at that, they’re down 89 percent in recent months. So, —
STEPHANOPOULOS: But –
HILLMAN: Please, sorry, go ahead.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Sorry.
Based on – based on the conversations you all have had so far, do you have a clear idea of what the United States is looking for to prevent the implementation of the tariffs?
HILLMAN: Well, the focus has been on the border, fentanyl and illegal migration. And as I say, we – we’ve invested in a lot of equipment. We’ve invested in additional infrastructure. And we have put together a plan that we are implementing with the border czar, Tom Homan. We met with him on Friday. We walked through it. We have joint exercises. We have joint training. And we’re going with officials from the White House, our police agency, to China in the coming days to – to try and grapple with the precursor issue. So, it’s hard to know what more we can do, but we’re obviously open to any other suggestions that come our way.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, you’ve had these lower-level conversations, but nothing between the prime minister and the president?
HILLMAN: So the prime minister and the president have discussed this a few times, not in recent days, but they have discussed it. And we’ve discussed it with senior members of the White House as well, and we’ve laid out our plan. And my understanding is that the plan and some of the actual outcomes results of what we have done have been presented to the president.
STEPHANOPOULOS: President Trump seems to be banking on the prospect that Canada is going to back down.
HILLMAN: Yeah. I — you know, look, I think the Canadian people are going to expect that our government stands firm and stands up for itself. I don’t think we’re not at all in interested in escalating. But I think that there will be a very strong demand on our government to make sure that we — we stand up for — for the deal that we have struck with the — with the United States, which as I say is at a 99 percent tariff free trade between our two countries.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So if these negotiations do not bear fruit before Tuesday, what exactly is going to happen on Tuesday?
HILLMAN: So, on our side, we will be implementing 25 percent tariffs on U.S. products. We will go up to a hundred billion U.S. dollars worth of products. We will start with about 30 billion and then we will give notice of — of the remainder of the products probably for about 20, 21 days and then implement those if need be, if we haven’t found a way out of this — this situation.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And what will be the message to — to Canadians? Would it be to stop using products from the United States, a boycott?
HILLMAN: Well, I’ll be honest. I — we as a government aren’t necessarily needing to send that message. Canadians are perplexed, I think disappointed. We view ourselves as your — your neighbor, your closest friend, your ally, you know, a country whose — whose citizens have fought and died with you around the world, in defense of values that we share who come to the aid of the Los Angeles fires most recently. And I think are really perplexed by this move. So I don’t think anybody will need to tell Canadians what to do I think that they will make their decisions on their own.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You say perplexed. Do Canadians feel betrayed?
HILLMAN: I think — I think they’re — I think they’re confused. I don’t think they understand where this is coming from. I think they know the degree to which we have made every effort to address the president’s concerns and so they just don’t understand where this is coming from, and I — and probably there’s a little bit of hurt, right?
We have 400,000 to 500,000 people that move back and forth between our two countries every day — businesses, tourists, students, workers — and there’s a sense of partnership, of family, of being each other’s best — as I say best customer, best friend. So I think that this is something that we really don’t — the Canadians don’t understand.
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