Navarro: Harsh comments against Trudeau were a ‘mistake’

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Tuesday walked back his comments over the weekend saying that there was a "special place in hell" for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, acknowledging that his language was "inappropriate."

"Let me correct a mistake I made," Navarro said at a conference in Washington hosted by The Wall Street Journal’s CFO Network.

“My mission was to send a strong signal of strength,” he said. “The problem is that in conveying that message I used language that was inappropriate.”

Navarro exacerbated bilateral tensions between the U.S. and Canada on Sunday when he criticized Trudeau for double-crossing President Donald Trump. Navarro’s comments came after Trudeau said Canada would stand firmly against tariffs that Trump plans to impose on Canadian steel and aluminum.

"There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door," Navarro told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." "And that’s what bad-faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference."

Navarro said Sunday that his sentiment came "right from Air Force One." But on Tuesday, he apologized for using language that counteracted his goal of sending a signal of strength.

"In conveying that message I used language that was inappropriate and basically lost the power of that message," he said, according to the Journal. "I own that, that was my mistake, my words."

Trump himself emphasized that he has a "good" relationship with the Canadian leader, but he appeared less than apologetic Tuesday when asked about the rhetorical back-and-forth between the two countries.

Speaking during a news conference in Singapore on Tuesday, Trump said his fury was directed specifically at Trudeau’s pledge to impose retaliatory tariffs in response to U.S. duties on steel and aluminum and his comments during a press conference that Canada would "not be pushed around" by the United States.

"And I say, push him around? We just shook hands. It was very friendly," Trump said. "He learned. That’s going to cost a lot of money for the people of Canada."

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