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“War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.” That is, unless you’re a federal or provincial political incumbent who might benefit from capitalizing on the same anti-Americanism that took the Liberals from life support to a minority government. Canadians, on the other hand, have been largely left in the dark on negotiations and the specifics of a failed deal with our largest and closest trading partner.
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Now, Canadians are expected to support these “war” efforts blindly. We shouldn’t. We should demand that our government gets back to the negotiating table, and this time, gives us regular updates about its progress. Details provided so far about the deal and the reasons why the Liberals walked away are far too mysterious for Canadians to support a “war” that will be economically disastrous for our country.
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Here’s what we know has happened in terms of negotiations since the Liberals prorogued Parliament.
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Then-prime minister Justin Trudeau flew down to Washington and had a meeting with American business leaders about proposed tariffs on Canadian products. We do not know what happened at that meeting, but according to Reuters, it does not appear that Trudeau got past telling them that the tariffs would have “negative impacts” and criticizing them. At this point, it seems that Trudeau thought there may still have been a chance that the Trump administration might not levy the tariffs simply because he criticized them. No other talks about the substance of the tariffs appear to have taken place.
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U.S. President Donald Trump announces tariffs on Canada will take effect on Feb. 4, including 25 per cent on almost all goods, 10 per cent on energy resources. Canada announced that it would respond with retaliatory tariffs in stages — $30 billion on U.S. goods to begin on Feb. 4 and a round of duties on $125 billion of U.S. goods 21 days later.
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Trudeau had two calls with Trump — one in the morning and a follow-up in the afternoon. Trudeau told the press they’d had a good call. Both Trump’s and Canada’s retaliatory tariffs were postponed for 30 days and Trudeau committed to launching a “strike force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering.” Trump posted to his Truth Social at the time, “Canada has agreed to ensure we have a secure northern border,” but added that that pause was to “see whether or not a final economic deal with Canada can be structured.”
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Trump signs an order for the U.S. to target incoming steel and aluminum products from all countries, tariffing them at 25 per cent beginning on March 12.
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Trudeau and Trump spoke on a call. Trump released a statement saying they discussed hockey, the G7, Ukraine and the border measures recently implemented. Trudeau informed him that Canada had seen a 90 per cent reduction in fentanyl crossing the border and that there would be meetings the following week between the Canadian border czar and his American counterpart. The call ended with them both saying they looked forward to the next.
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U.S. tariffs announced in February take effect. Trudeau announced Canada would be applying 25 per cent tariffs on $155 billion worth of U.S. goods and warned that he was in discussions with the provinces about applying pressure through non-tariff measures. Trudeau said, “Our tariffs will remain in place until the U.S. tariffs are withdrawn and not a moment sooner.”
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Trudeau and Trump spoke again, this time, Vice-President JD Vance and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were on the “heated” call that lasted almost 50 minutes. At that time, the U.S. proposed dropping some, but not all, of the tariffs. Trudeau declined, saying Canada would only stop retaliating if the U.S. dropped all of the tariffs. Adding fuel to the fire, then-foreign affairs Minister Mélanie Joly called the negotiations a “psychodrama.”
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At this point, it appeared that the Liberals still had no intention of accepting any tariffs or negotiating.
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Trudeau left office and was replaced by newly appointed Liberal Leader Mark Carney.
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Carney had his first phone call with Trump, which the president described as “extremely productive.” It is clear from reporting at that time that Carney understood, unlike his predecessor, that Trump was serious about having some form of tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum, and other products. This appears to have led Carney to draw the conclusion that the U.S. was “no longer a reliable partner.” Carney then said, “It is probable now that by negotiating we will able to restore an element of trust but we cannot go back.” Carney said such negotiations about a “new economic and security relationship” between Canada and the U.S. would take place after the election, which was going to take place on April 28.
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U.S. 25 per cent auto tariffs came into effect with CUSMA-compliant vehicles taxed only on non-U.S. content.
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The Liberals won a minority government.
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Carney attended an Oval Office meeting with Trump, who congratulated him on winning the election. Carney called Trump a “transformational president.” When a reporter asked Trump what it would take to get tariffs off Canada, he said they would be talking about a lot of things. When later asked if there was anything Carney could do to get him to remove tariffs on Canada, Trump said “no.” Trump then explained that he saw the U.S. having Canada build things Americans could build instead, like automobiles, essentially amounted to the U.S. subsidizing Canada.
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It was clear that Trump was holding a grudge against Trudeau, whom he referred to as “governor” during the meeting, and Chrystia Freeland, who he referred to as a “terrible person.” Trump did not name Freeland outright, but she was minister of foreign affairs during Trump’s first term and was responsible for negotiating CUSMA. Trump then suggested that Freeland hurt the previous trade talks “very badly.”
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Two things are clear at this point: tariffs on Canadian products will exist in some form or another and the Liberals have seriously damaged Canada’s relationship with the United States.
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Carney and Trump met again, this time at the G7 in Kananaskis, Alta. A reporter asked Trump what, from his perspective, was holding up a deal with Canada. Trump replied, “It’s not so much holding up. I think we have different concepts. I have a tariff concept, and Mark has a different concept, which is something that some people like. But we’re going to see if we can get to the bottom of it today. I’m a tariff person. I’ve always been a tariff — it’s simple, it’s easy, it’s precise and it just goes very quickly. And I think Mark has a — a more complex idea, but also very good. So we’re going to look at both, and we’re going to see what we’ll — we’re going to come out with something, hopefully.” When asked whether that would take days or weeks, he replied, “It’s achievable. Both parties have to agree.” Both committed to signing a deal within 30 days.
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Trump suspended trade talks because Canada was planning to implement a digital services tax (DST) the following Monday that would affect Canadian and foreign businesses that engage with users online.
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It was announced that Ottawa scrapped the DST and talks would resume. At this point, it was reported that Canada’s finance ministry said it would be going back to negotiations in hopes of having a deal by July 21.
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We have no idea what happened and why a deal wasn’t struck by then, but at some point, a new deadline of Aug. 1 was established and it did not look like the two countries would reach an agreement.
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Trump told reporters that the U.S. hadn’t “really had a lot of luck with Canada,” and that it could be a country “where there’s just a tariff, not really a negotiation.”
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July 30, 2025
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Things appeared to escalate again, this time over Canada’s decision to recognize Palestine as a state. In response to this, Trump posted, “Wow! Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine. That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them.”
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July 31, 2025
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Trump signed an executive order raising tariffs from 25 to 35 per cent (not affecting CUSMA products) as he had previously warned if Canada did not meet the deadline.
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Aug. 1, 2025
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Canada would soon start feeling economic pain from 50 per cent tariffs applied to copper and more than double countervailing tariffs placed on softwood lumber.
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Aug. 21, 2025
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Carney and Trump spoke on the phone. This was reportedly their first publicly acknowledged contact since no deal was reached by Trump’s Aug. 1 deadline.
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Aug. 22, 2025
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Carney announced that, as of Sept. 1, the Canadian government would “now match the United States by removing all of Canada’s tariffs on U.S. goods specifically covered under CUSMA.” At the time, Trump said, “I like Carney a lot, I think he’s a good person and we had a very good talk yesterday, so I think it’ll be good.” Trump likely felt this was fairer, because with the exception of the targeted sectoral tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum, the U.S. had not tariffed goods that were part of CUSMA, as Canada had done.
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Canada and China were the only two countries to retaliate against tariffs.
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A reporter asked Carney at this time what happened to elbows up. Carney replied with another hockey metaphor that suggested he thought taking extra penalties wasn’t the right thing to do.
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Aug. 29, 2025
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The “de minimis” rule that protected low-value items from duties ended and reportedly began to hit mom and pop shops hard.
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Sept. 29, 2025
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U.S. announces it will be adding 10 per cent tariffs on all imported timber and lumber and 25 per cent duties on kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and upholstered furniture to begin on Oct. 14.
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Oct. 7, 2025
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Carney attended a second Oval Office meeting. Trump made it clear he was open to renegotiating or making different deals. Carney reportedly was looking for relief on tariffs in specific sectors (Section 232) on things like steel and aluminum, which were tariffed at 50 per cent. Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc called the talks both “successful” and “positive.”
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Things looked hopeful. According to U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra, as part of a potential deal, Carney had offered to double oil experts to the U.S. Reportedly, Keystone XL and defence were discussed, and Carney told reporters at the time that he and Trump had “identified opportunities for material progress in trade in steel, aluminium and energy.”
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Oct. 24-25, 2026
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Trump cancelled negotiations after an Ontario anti-tariff ad featuring former U.S. president Ronald Reagan aired during two baseball games. Reportedly, talks broke down, not just because of the ad. White House spokesperson Kush Desai called the ad the “latest example of how Canadian officials would rather play games than engage with the administration,” and the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, accused Canada of having a “lack of flexibility,” suggesting it was “leftover behaviours from the Trudeau folks.”
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Oct. 29, 2025
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Carney apologized to Trump for the ad at a dinner at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Gyeongju, South Korea. The Government of Canada told The Canadian Press that talks had not resumed after the apology, and that Canada was ready to pick up where they left off. Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford was framing the ad as a victory: “We’ve achieved our goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels.”
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Reaching U.S. audiences might be helpful if your goal is to have an effect on an upcoming U.S. election, not secure a sensitive trade deal.
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Dec. 5, 2025
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Carney, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and U.S. President Donald Trump met privately and sat together at the FIFA World Cup draw that took place at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The Prime Minister’s Office said they had at least one 45-minute discussion and “agreed to keep working together on CUSMA.” Trump told reporters that all three of them were also going to discuss immigration and trade.
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Feb. 2, 2026
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U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Fox Business that it was Canada that was maintaining barriers that were making the talks difficult: “They continue to have certain barriers. They refuse to sell U.S. wine and spirits on their shelves. There are a variety of issues that they have not addressed and they aren’t addressing, and this makes it a big challenge and an obstacle for starting real negotiations with them.”
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March 6
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Four months later, LeBlanc met Greer in Washington, D.C., to discuss the upcoming CUSMA review on July 1.
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March 31
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Greer’s office released a report outlining trade irritants with Canada, noting that Trump wanted U.S. alcohol to “immediately and permanently” return to shelves in all provinces. It also cited concerns with “Buy Canadian” policies, high tariffs on U.S. dairy and concerns about delays with aircraft validation in Canada.
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June 17
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The Canadian Press reported that Carney never had an official meeting with Trump during the G7 summit in France, but told the press he’d had seven or eight discussions with him and got him a birthday present that he liked “a lot.” But no official bilateral talks were had between the two.
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Meanwhile, Canada had recently agreed to reduce its tariffs on Chinese EVs from 100 to 6.1 per cent, capping vehicles annually at 49,000, while China suspended its retaliatory tariffs on Canadian agricultural goods.
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July 1
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The U.S. declined to extend CUSMA for another 16 years and opted instead for annual reviews.
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July 19
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Sheinbaum, Trump and Carney attended the World Cup final together in East Rutherford, N.J.
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July 20
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With no progress in sight, Trump announced plans to levy 50 per cent tariffs on more Canadians imports in response to what he saw as discriminatory treatment of U.S. dairy goods, cars and alcohol.
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This brings us up to the most recent failed negotiations.
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July 21
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Suddenly, Carney was back on the phone with Trump agreeing to intensify talks.
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Aug. 17
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Curiously, Carney told reporters at the the press conference for the Churchill Falls deal that, “The most important thing happening this week in Canada is today’s announcement,” which was interesting, seeing as we all knew U.S. trade talks were happening and no one had walked away at the point.
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I contacted his office to ask about the remark and other details about the deal. I never received a response.
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Aug. 18
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Before talks broke down, it looked like things were going well. On the evening of Aug. 18, Trump exuberantly declared on Truth Social that Canada and the U.S. had a “DEAL” (pending finalized documents) and that Keystone XL “may be awoken from the grave!” LeBlanc posted a picture of himself with Greer, saying they were working towards a finalized agreement.
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That same day, a Leger poll was released that found that a majority of Canadians polled earlier that week, when talks had resumed, said the government should draw a hard line and not make more concessions. At least one Canadian journalist echoed this sentiment.
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It wasn’t hard to see that Carney — with all his talk of elbows and never ever getting back together — hadn’t prepared Canadians for concessions. The anti-Americanism had reached such a fever pitch that it wouldn’t matter what deal was offered, Canadians who hadn’t seen it weren’t going to accept it, on principle.
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Aug. 21-22
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So perhaps we shouldn’t have been too surprised hear on Aug. 21 from Carney that talks had broken down. He gave a press conference in Ottawa the next day, which left everyone with more questions than answers.
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During it, Carney said that the U.S. would restrict Canada’s ability to make other trade deals. He told Canadians, “Building at home and diversifying trade abroad is not our Plan B. It has been our Plan A from the start.”
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According to the New York Times, a Canadian official said that the U.S. wanted the assurance that Canada would apply U.S. tariffs, particularly in regards to steel, to other countries now and into the future. This was, no doubt, a point of contention with the U.S.
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Carney is on record as governor of the Bank of England in 2019 suggesting in a speech that the global economy needed a new reserve currency to improve its functioning and posited the Chinese Renminbi as the “most likely candidate.” “Already, China is the world’s leading trading nation, overtaking the U.S. at the start of this decade,” he said.
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As such, it would be natural if the U.S. was suspicious of Carney’s motivations in making trade deals with China.
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CUSMA already limits foreign materials like steel from China in what can be considered as CUMSA-compliant products. For example, under CUSMA’s rules of origins regulations, “at least 70 per cent by value of the vehicle producer’s purchases at the corporate level in the territories of one or more of the CUSMA countries of steel and aluminum … are of originating goods,” meaning, coming from either Canada, Mexico or the United States.
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Unlike Carney, Greer made himself available for Canadian interviews (in English and French) and was clear and direct about what had been offered. He told CBC’s Rosemary Barton that the 25 per cent auto tariffs in effect would be reduced to 15, and could possibly go to seven (excluding medium and heavy trucks). He said aluminum would go from 50 to 25 per cent (no quota) and steel from 50 to 25 per cent.
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Canada walking away from the deal this time was beneficial to Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette, who enjoyed an uptick in ratings after the deal fell through, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s popularity jumped from 24 per cent in July to 36 after the deal fell through.
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We know Carney was unable to secure an agreement from Ford to put alcohol back on the shelves in order to close the deal. This should have been simple. The Americans saw this as a major irritant. They were fine with it being on the shelves and tariffed, Hoekstra told me. It was the ban they found insulting and unnecessarily antagonizing.
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After talks collapsed, a poll from Angus Reid on Aug. 23 found that 76 per cent of those surveyed thought that Carney did the right thing by ending negotiations — a silly poll to begin with, as no one had seen the deal that Canada had walked away from, so asking Canadians if it was right to do doesn’t make much sense. But hey, the Liberals can always point to it, I guess, to say they followed Canadians’ wishes.
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So there’s a strong chance that the Liberals will suffer politically if they sign a deal with any concessions, which is an impossible situation to be in, albeit one they created themselves.
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Either way, as of Aug. 22, 50 per cent Section 338 tariffs on Canadian goods took effect. Canada threatened dollar-for-dollar retaliation effective Sept. 8. Trump responded by threatening 50 per cent tariffs, instead of 15, on all autos, effective Jan. 1, 2027. And round and round we go.
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It might be a good time to take the gloves off, lower the elbows, stop speaking about “war” and get back to the table. But do the Liberals really have any incentive to do so?
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There is no question that capitalizing on anti-Trump and anti-American rhetoric helped resuscitate the Liberal party.
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On Nov. 24, 2024, Donald Trump, who was president-elect at the time, posted to his Truth Social account that he would impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, complaining about fentanyl and illegal immigration.
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An Angus Reid survey taken at the end of December reported the Liberal party polling at 16 per cent popularity — the party’s worst result in 157 years. On Jan. 6, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau resigned, proroguing Parliament, precisely when all MPs should have been weighing in and debating how best to handle Trump’s tariff threat.
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Despite Trump’s original tariff threats occurring three months prior, a mid-January 2025 poll found that Trump still barely even registered on Canadians’ list of top concerns, which at the time were the rising cost of living (67 per cent), health care (40 per cent), housing affordability (38 per cent), the economy (37 per cent), immigration (28 per cent), Donald Trump and his administration (26 per cent) and, lastly, climate change (15 per cent).
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On Jan. 16, Carney launched his leadership bid and immediately positioned himself as the best possible person to deal with Trump, and described choosing the Liberals over the Conservatives as a choice between “calm versus chaos,” which is funny, because there is nothing calm about war language or walking away from trade talks.
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From the beginning, Carney never sounded like someone who was interested in negotiating. After Trump signed the tariff order, Carney told BBC Newsnight, “President Trump probably thinks Canada will cave in. But we are going to stand up to a bully, we’re not going to back down.… We’re united and we will retaliate.”
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On March 9, after his leadership victory speech, Carney said, “Americans should make no mistake.… In trade, as in hockey, Canada will win.” But what is winning for Canada when it’s clear that our largest and closest trading partner will not change its mind on restructuring trade to protect its industries? Surely, it isn’t Canada and the United States waging “war” in an overtime that never ends.
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On Monday, before Canadian counter-tariffs took effect, Trump announced that the U.S. would no longer buy Bombardier products from Canada unless they were built in the United States. He complained that Gulfstream Aerospace had been blocked from doing business with Canada, referring to a certification issue that has not yet been resolved between the two countries.
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On Tuesday, Canada’s counter-tariffs against the U.S. came into effect. Products will become even more expensive for Canadians and the funds will be collected by Ottawa.
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It’s been clear for a while now that the United States has been committed to changing trade terms with every country, not just Canada. We can disagree with the U.S. administration’s choice to rearrange its economy to bring manufacturing back, but that doesn’t help get the best deal possible for Canadians now. There was never a chance of going back to the old deal, which is why the continued war rhetoric and escalating tariffs make zero sense at this point.
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Some have claimed no deal is better than a bad deal. But no deal is not better than a deal we haven’t seen and walked away from.
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If Lutnick is correct that the Liberals walked away for political reasons, including a provincial election in Quebec and Alberta’s referendum vote in October, and that Canadian trade representatives would be back after that, looking for a deal, we may be in big trouble. Canada isn’t likely get a deal as good as the one it walked away from. This is part of Trump’s philosophy. It’s in his book. More importantly, Canadians still do not completely understand why we walked away. This is why Carney needs to agree to a long interview about the collapse of negotiations. We are still a democracy, right?
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