President Donald Trump's trade adviser Peter Navarro has apologized for saying there is "a special place in hell" for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Navarro offered the apology at a Wall Street Journal conference Tuesday, the Journal's Gerald Seib tweeted. 

Seib quotes Navarro, the White House National Trade Council Director, as saying: "Let me correct a mistake I made...In conveying that message I used language that was inappropriate." Navarro told the Journal of his appearance on Fox News Sunday last week, "My mission was to send a strong signal of strength."

Navarro told Fox that "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." His comments came after Trudeau had said at the end of the G7 summit in Quebec that he wouldn't let Canada be pushed around in trade relations with the United States.

Following Trudeau's comments, Mr. Trump then retracted his endorsement of the final statement from the G7 summit after initially signing onto the joint communique. He tweeted from Air Force One, "Based on Justin's false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!"

Navarro added on Fox that Trudeau's move was "one of the worst political miscalculations of a Canadian leader in modern Canadian history."  A Trudeau spokesman, Cameron Ahmad, said Saturday night that Trudeau "said nothing he hasn't said before -- both in public and in private conversations" with Mr. Trump.

Navarro's previous comments were followed up by Mr. Trump's top economic adviser Larry Kudlow who told CBS' "Face the Nation" the same day that Trudeau "should've known better" than to take "pot shots" at Mr. Trump. 

"To be honest with you, Prime Minister Trudeau, I respect. I've worked with him in good faith getting through a good communique on Friday and Saturday. So he holds a press conference -- the president is barely out of there on the plane to North Korea, and he starts insulting us, he starts talking about the U.S. is insulting Canada," Kudlow said. 

"In general, it was an attack on the president," he claimed.