A set of eleventh-hour revisions to the American position, which Prime Minister Mark Carney branded unfair, uneconomic and corrosive to the credibility of any agreement, has prompted Ottawa to abandon trade negotiations with the United States.
Announced late Friday, the move followed a week of talks in Washington aimed at closing a deal before the Trump administration’s Friday night deadline. Rather than sign terms he could not defend, Carney said he ordered Canada’s negotiators home to Ottawa.
According to his statement, the negotiating team worked hard and in good faith to defend the interests of Canadians up until the very last minute. He added that the last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.
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The U.S. proceeded at midnight with a 50 per cent tariff on roughly $28 billion of Canadian goods. Promising to match those levies dollar for dollar, Carney set the stage for a sharp escalation between two economies long counted among the world’s closest trading partners.
Both sides had described the talks as nearly complete before they unravelled. Throughout the week, Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc held repeated meetings with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Never made public, the tentative agreement would have eased sectoral tariffs that have hit Canadian aluminum, steel and automobile producers for months. Carney, in turn, had urged premiers to weigh lifting provincial bans on American alcohol.
Greer told a different story, contending that Canada refused to finalize the deal struck earlier in the week. He said that even after the U.S. offered Canada what he called the best treatment of any major exporter to the American market, Ottawa raised fresh demands and reversed earlier commitments. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had voiced dissatisfaction with the proposed terms, according to sources briefed on the discussions.
Additional measures to support Canadian workers and businesses will come in the days ahead, Carney said, adding to the nearly $25 billion in support delivered over the past 18 months.
He cast the confrontation as part of a wider push to build domestic strength and diversify trade, citing nearly $500 billion in major infrastructure projects underway and free trade access to 1.5 billion consumers that Ottawa expects to double by year end.
Trump did not immediately comment.
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