Washington DC – Washington intends to maintain its tariffs on Mexico and Canada, despite ongoing US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) negotiations, according to US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.

"The US is going to have tariffs," Greer told a Council on Foreign Relations event in Washington on Tuesday.

"I mean, even with somebody ​like Mexico, or other countries that are in our own hemisphere, we're going to have tariffs as ⁠long as we have a giant trade deficit."

Greer singled out trade tensions between Ottawa and Washington as a "significant" problem for ongoing USMCA negotiations.

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The USMCA is unlikely to continue as a full tariff-free trade pact, Greer implied.

Specifically, auto and steel tariffs on both Mexico and Canada are likely to continue, and rule changes will be implemented to encourage production within the US.

"Ultimately, at the end of the day, frankly, for national security regions, I ​want to have our supply chain sourced from this hemisphere, right from North America," Greer said.

"[Canada is] just in a different spot, and it's hard to see necessarily where that ends... I will say: We have trade in energy, in minerals, and other things, fertilizers, between the US and Canada that really has not been affected, that has gone untouched, that's gone without any trouble," he continued.

"Those are areas of common economic benefit... When it comes to some of these manufactured goods, we have a different view."

Canadian-US relations have been increasingly tense under President Donald Trump, largely due to his tariff policy and repeated threats to turn Canada into the 51st US state.

As things stand, official USMCA negotiations have kicked off between the US and Mexico, but have yet to begin between the US and Canada.