OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney said he walked away from a “bad deal” with the United States and that Canada is now “at war” after being “attacked” by steep tariffs on $29 billion worth of Canadian goods going south of the border.
“We were attacked. You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked,” Carney told reporters gather in the West Block foyer on Parliament Hill.
Carney was speaking at a press conference on Saturday morning after suspending trade talks with U.S. President Donald Trump and then announcing matching retaliatory tariffs. Carney said the retaliatory measures would come into effect on the Tuesday after Labour Day.
It is the first time Carney has announced new tariffs on the United States since he was elected prime minister last spring, marking a significant new break in bilateral relations that will have significant repercussions in both countries.
Carney itemized several flashpoints in the final week of negotiations with the U.S. that led to the collapse in talks, including language on auto industry tariffs and “efforts to restrict our protections of our language, our culture, and in effect, our sovereignty.”
He also said the U.S. inserted language into the deal “in the last hours” that seemed to restrict Canada’s ability to make other trade deals, which Carney said would “always be unacceptable to this government.”
The prime minister also said that any deal with the U.S. would be unreliable.
“Our government understood before many that America would transform all of its commercial relationships, that it would put a series of tariffs on its closest allies, and use economic integration as a weapon. We recognize that sometimes its signature was written in pencil,” said Carney.
Carney also hinted at divisions in the U.S. negotiating team that led to last-minute changes in the deal that were unacceptable to Canada.
Carney said that the Canadian team of negotiators was “unified” but that “you cannot say that about the United States administration.” He said that differences in the Trump administration had been “papered over” until the two countries started drilling down on the finer details of the deal this week.
Just minutes before a midnight deadline on Friday night, Carney said that Canada was withdrawing from the talks because “last-minute changes” to the agreement made by the U.S. “were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”
The sudden rupture of talks and escalation of the trade war between Canada and its biggest trading partner by far bodes poorly for ongoing Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) talks.
“This is not good news” for the renegotiation of CUSMA, Carney said in French.
A sombre looking and sounding Carney was flanked by stoic and exhausted Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Canada’s chief trade negotiator Janice Charette.
The two countries were engaged in lengthy negotiations to reach a deal that would avert new 50 per cent tariffs on $29 billion-worth of Canadian goods. Now, those levies will come into effect and Carney has pledged to match them dollar-for-dollar on U.S. goods.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Saturday that he’s glad Carney didn’t sign a deal with Trump and supported the prime minister’s plan for retaliatory tariffs on the United States.
“We never started this fight, but I can assure we’re going to win this fight,” said Ford. “We have to use every tool in our toolbox to make sure as Donald Trump is trying to inflict pain on every Canadian that we inflict pain right back.”
The government also announced on Friday that it would introduce “additional measures to support Canadian workers and businesses” affected by the U.S. tariffs.
Carney will also hold a cabinet meeting at 12:15 p.m. and a meeting with provincial premiers at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, according to his itinerary.
After the two sides broke off talks, the Americans blamed Canada for the breakdown in negotiations.
“Despite the U.S. offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days,” said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, in a statement posted on social media on Friday night.
On Saturday morning, Greer said no new talks were planned and that the U.S. was moving ahead with plans to “respond to Canadian retaliation.”
National Post
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