A senior economic advisor to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump says Canada and the U.S. will continue to have a strong economic relationship.

Stephen Calk, Chairman and CEO, National Bancorp Holdings – as well as economic advisor to Trump – tells BNN in an interview that Canada occupies a prominent place in the Trump’s economic plans.

“Canada is, has been and hopefully always will be one of our strongest and fairest trading partners. At the end of the day, I think we’re all excited about the fact that [Prime Minister] Trudeau has already reached out to President-elect Trump and wants to have a dialogue,” he said. “Our bonds, our trading relationships go back 100-plus years: Canada is an extremely, extremely important country to the United States, and I see nothing that would prevent that from continuing to grow and remain strong.”

Calk said he doesn’t expect Trump will end up completely withdrawing the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, but does think he will be able to secure changes to the terms of the trade deal.

“I think most countries understand we’re an incredibly important country and an incredibly important trading partner and they understand the need to put America and create parity and equality in those trade relationships,” he said.

“We don’t want to hurt our neighbours by any means, but there has been a slow leaching, or a progressive weakening of our trade policies over time to the point that we can’t be competitive in certain areas.”