According to The Wall Street Journal, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Canada was “optimistic about having some good, productive discussions this week.” And President Donald Trump this week said Canada “very much wants to make the deal.” 

In a separate trade-related development, the U.S. Commerce Department said on Wednesday that Trump has signed a proclamation granting limited relief from Section 232 steel import quotas to three countries: South Korea, Argentina and Brazil. 

The countries had negotiated quotas-in-lieu-of-tariffs agreements with the U.S. earlier this year. The proclamation allows the U.S. Department of Commerce to exclude steel fom those countries from the quotas. 

As the Commerce Department explains: 

“Companies can apply for product exclusions based on insufficient quantity or quality available from U.S. steel or aluminum producers. In such cases, an exclusion from the quota may be granted and no tariff would be owed.

“In a limited number of cases, steel articles are being used in a facility construction project in the United States that were contracted for purchase prior to the decision to impose quotas, and cannot presently enter into the United States because a quota has already been reached. In such a case, an exclusion from the quota may be granted, but the product may only be imported upon payment of the 25% tariff.”

Any requests for exclusions from the quotas would be in addition to the thousands of requests that the Commerce Department has already received for exclusion from the tariffs. The process by which the department reviews those request has been subject to steep criticism. 

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren intensified that criticism this week, requesting that the Commerce Department inspector general’s office investigate the process, according to the online publication Vox. 

“The Commerce Department process for making decisions that affect thousands of American companies subject to President Trump’s tariffs is failing to protect national security; it is arbitrary and opaque, replete with mistakes and subject to political favoritism. It is therefore imperative that your office investigate this matter,” Warren wrote in a letter to the inspector general, according to Vox. 

Meanwhile, Thomas J. Gibson,  president and chief executive of the American Iron and Steel Institute, defended the tariffs in a newspaper op-ed, saying that they are accomplishing what they were meant to do. He also argued that exclusions should be the exception rather than the rule.  

“Country exemptions or product exclusions should not undermine (the tariffs). In the rare cases where there is a specific niche product that the domestic steel industry does not or cannot make, the process to apply for a product-specific exclusion is being utilized,” he wrote.