Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he recently advised the Liberal government to diversify its trade away from the United States amid the ongoing tariff disputes, which he said was “the opposite” advice that he would have given just a year ago.
The former Conservative leader made the comments at a July 28 Canada-U.S. relations conference in Saskatoon. Harper said he would’ve told Prime Minister Mark Carney a year ago that Ottawa had a “significant opportunity” to strengthen its economic and security ties with the United States. Now, however, his advice is very different.
“When this government did actually ask me a few weeks ago, my advice was the opposite,” Harper said. “My advice was … on the economy, we’ve got to kind of get something short-term worked out with the Trump administration. But this really is a wake-up call for this country to truly diversify its trade export markets.”…