WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump sought to patch up any lingering bad feelings with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Monday, calling him a "good man" after they agreed on a new trade accord.
The two leaders exchanged a late night phone call Sunday after reaching the new US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, which replaces the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.
"There was a lot of tension between he and I and more specifically. It's all worked out. You know when it ended? About 12 last night," Trump said at a White House news conference.
"He's a good man and he loves the people of Canada," Trump added.
Not too long ago Trump was flinging insults at Trudeau over Twitter, taunting him as "very dishonest & weak" and "meek and mild" in June as he left a G7 summit in Canada that the prime minister had hosted.
Those remarks set the stage for a bitter struggle over trade, with Trump threatening to drop Canada from the regional trade pact altogether if it didn't yield to key US demands.
In the end, Trudeau made a concession on Trump's biggest demand, agreeing to ease barriers to entry in Canada's protected dairy market.
In Ottawa, Trudeau hailed the agreement as "profoundly beneficial for our economy, for Canadian families and for the middle class."