Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser to President Trump, said Tuesday it was a mistake to say publicly there is a “special place in hell” for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and said he went too far while trying to send a “signal of strength.”

“In conveying that message, I used language that was inappropriate and basically lost the power of that message,” Navarro said during the Wall Street Journal’s CFO Network meeting. “I own that, that was my mistake, my words.”