TORONTO (AP) — Canada's ambassador to the U.S. for the last six years said Tuesday she's resigning next year as the two major trading partners plan to review the free trade agreement.
Ambassador Kirsten Hillman said in a letter it is the right time to put in place someone who will oversee talks about the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that is up review in 2026.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Hillman “prepared the foundations for Canada in the upcoming review" of the agreement.
Carney noted she’s one of the longest-serving ambassadors to the United States in Canada's history.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent Hillman to the embassy as deputy ambassador in 2017. She became the first woman to represent Canada as ambassador in the U.S. in 2019.
Hillman helped lead the trade negotiations during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term as deputy and as ambassador worked with U.S. and Chinese officials to win the release of two Canadians detained in China.
Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade, and Hillman had been leading trade talks with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra said on social media that Hillman has been an “awesome and well-respected” contributor to the U.S.-Canada relationship.
“I value your friendship and wish you all the best in your next adventure. You will be missed,” Hoekstra said.
Trump ended trade talks with Carney in October after the Ontario provincial government ran an anti-tariff advertisement in the U.S., which upset the U.S. president. That followed a spring of acrimony, since abated, over Trump's insistence that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state.
Asked this week when trade talks would resume, Trump said, “we'll see.”
Canada is one of the most trade-dependent countries in the world, and more than 75% of Canada’s exports go to the U.S. Most exports to the U.S. are exempted by the USMCA trade agreement but that deal is up for review.
Carney aims to double non-U.S. trade over the next decade.
About 60% of U.S. crude oil imports are from Canada, and 85% of U.S. electricity imports as well.
Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the U.S. and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and investing in for national security.
FILE - Ambassador of Canada to the U.S. Kirsten Hillman listens during a First Ministers' meeting in Ottawa, Ontario, Jan. 15, 2025. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
After decades of political maneuvering through Congress and government agencies, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina may finally achieve federal recognition through the National Defense Authorization Act the House plans to vote on this week.
If the legislation passes, the Senate could vote on final passage as soon as next week.
The Lumbee’s efforts to gain federal recognition — which would come with federal funding, access to resources like the Indian Health Service and the ability to take land into trust — have been controversial for many years both in Indian Country and in Washington. But their cause has been championed by President Donald Trump, who promised on the campaign trail last year to acknowledge the Lumbee as a tribal nation.
The issue of federal recognition for the Lumbee Tribe has been batted around Congress for more than thirty years. But the political opportunity it represented in the last election could be what pushed it over the finish line, said Kevin Washburn, former assistant secretary of Indian Affairs at the Interior Department and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
“It comes up every four years because North Carolina is a battleground state and the Lumbee represent tens of thousands of people,” Washburn said.
The Lumbee Tribe has nearly 60,000 members, and both Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris promised the Lumbee federal recognition during the 2024 campaign. Trump won North Carolina by more than 3 points. Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an executive order directing the Interior Department to create a plan for federal recognition for the Lumbee.
It's the first time either the White House or the candidates for president have been so engaged in a federal recognition case, Washburn said.
Interior's plan was sent to the White House in April. The administration has denied requests for its release but has said it advised the Lumbee to continue trying to gain federal recognition through Congress.
The Lumbee were recognized by Congress in 1956, but that legislation denied them access to the same federal resources as tribal nations. As a result, their application for recognition was denied for consideration in the 1980s, and the Lumbee Tribe has tried to get Congress to acknowledge them in the decades since. The Office of Federal Acknowledgement is the federal agency that vets applications, although dozens of tribes have also gained recognition through legislation.
“Only Congress can for all time and for all purposes resolve this uncertainty,” Lumbee Tribal Chairman John Lowery testified last month before the Senate Committee for Indian Affairs. “It is long past time to rectify the injustice it has inflicted on our tribe and our people.”
But others, including several tribal leaders, argue that the Lumbee's historic claims have shifted many times over the last century and that they have never been able to prove they descend from a tribal nation.
“A national defense bill is not the appropriate place to consider federal recognition, particularly for a group that has not met the historical and legal standards required of sovereign tribal nations,” said Michell Hicks, chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
The National Defense Authorization Act is usually a bipartisan bill that lays out the nation’s defense policies. But this year the vote has taken on a new political dynamic as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faces mounting scrutiny over military strikes on boats off Venezuela’s coast.
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The story corrects the name of the Eastern Band chief to Michell Hicks, not Michelle.
FILE - Members of the Lumbee Tribe bow their heads in prayer during the BraveNation Powwow and Gather at UNC Pembroke, March 22, 2025, in Pembroke, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce, file)
