{"id":878348,"date":"2026-08-31T15:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/878348\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T15:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:24:11","slug":"as-us-canada-tensions-flare-whos-calling-the-shots-in-trumps-trade-team-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/878348\/","title":{"rendered":"As US-Canada tensions flare, who\u2019s calling the shots in Trump\u2019s trade team? | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having reportedly read<\/a> Victor Hugo\u2019s Les Mis\u00e9rables, in French, during a military tour of duty in Iraq, Jamieson Greer considered himself an unlikely target for accusations of francophobia.<\/p>\n

But Donald Trump\u2019s US trade representative, hitherto one of the president\u2019s less high-profile cabinet members, found himself in that uncomfortable position amid the acrimonious collapse of bilateral trade talks with Canada that now threatens to degenerate into an all-out trade war between the two close trading partners whose economies are tightly intertwined.<\/p>\n

An apparent pending deal between Washington and Ottawa aimed at avoiding damaging tit-for-tat tariffs broke down at the last minute, with Canada\u2019s prime minister, Mark Carney, claiming his country had come \u201cunder attack\u201d from the US.<\/p>\n

Among the multiple and complex points of disagreement was a Canadian accusation that US negotiators had pressed for a weakening of legal protections for the French language, which is most heavily spoken in the province of Quebec.<\/p>\n

Canadian provisions include legislation<\/a> that mandates streaming and online video companies to invest in and promote Canadian content and promote the French language. Carney cast US objections to such regulations as a deal breaker, and said they amounted to \u201cthreats to French language and culture\u201d.<\/p>\n

For Greer, a fluent French speaker who once served as a Mormon missionary in Belgium, France and Luxembourg, the charge was too much. \u201cI speak French, too,\u201d he told CNBC<\/a>, dismissing the claims as \u201ca funny, fake story\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy kids speak French,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of my kids was born in Paris. So I like the Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois, and I like that they speak French. What we don\u2019t like is a situation where Canada, the federal government, forces American tech companies to take their earnings and give a percentage to their competitors in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

The controversy may be the closest glimpse the public will see of Greer being rattled. By Thursday, in what was being being seen by some Canadian officials<\/a> as a potential olive branch, he was peddling a softer line on the language issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump, myself and the US government recognizes the importance and sensitivity of the French language in Canada,\u201d he told CBC<\/a>, the Canadian broadcaster. \u201cWe know that this is quite sensitive and quite important, and we actually champion the use of French.\u201d<\/p>\n

The impact was undermined hours later, however, when Trump publicly signed a retributive executive order<\/a> supposedly changing the name of Lake Ontario \u2013 one of the Great Lakes which has shores on both countries \u2013 to Lake America. Petty as the act was, it seemed to graphically illustrate the limited freedom of manoeuvre held by anyone representing a president so preoccupied with trade.<\/p>\n

And Greer is not the only official seeking to steer the president\u2019s aggressive agenda on trade \u2013 raising questions over who is really in control.<\/p>\n

Moving the goalposts<\/p>\n

Those who have met and worked with Greer describe the 46-year-old \u2013 who served as a military lawyer in Iraq, where he is reported to have read Hugo\u2019s classic novel between bombardments \u2013 as a model of calm and expertise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have high respect for him. He been pretty creative in terms of trying to thread the needle with other countries as he tries to promote Trump\u2019s trade policies,\u201d said Wendy Cutler, a former US trade representative\u2019s negotiator who has met Greer several times. \u201cFrom a professional viewpoint, he\u2019s extremely impressive. His reputation as being very level-headed, a very calm demeanor, and not someone who loses his temper or who grandstands.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not known if Greer retained his sang-froid in private as the talks with Canada unravelled, just days after Trump himself publicly declared a deal was at hand.<\/p>\n

According to reports, the agreement was derailed after Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, objected to the scale of proposed tariffs reductions on imports of Canadian steel, aluminium and cars, sectors falling under his responsibility after Trump declared them areas of national security under the 1962 Trade Expansion Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n

double quotation markIt appears Greer was willing to go farther than Lutnick wasWilliam Reinsch<\/p>\n

Carney, explaining why Canada decided to abandon the talks, pointed to disunity among the US negotiators. The White House has denied claims of division between Greer and Lutnick, but seasoned commentators are skeptical.<\/p>\n

\u201cLutnick viewed all this as his turf, and here is Greer, who is the designated guy to be effectively the trade minister if you think about it in the context of other countries, conducting the negotiations,\u201d said William Reinsch, a senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former undersecretary for commerce. \u201cIt appears Greer was willing to go farther than Lutnick was.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the Canadian point of view, this was a disagreement that developed late in the day and led the Canadians to believe that the United States was moving the goalposts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cutler, who served Republican and Democratic administrations during a 27-year stint as a US trade negotiator, said tensions within negotiating teams were not unprecedented, but were normally ironed out before talks reached the critical stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the challenge under this administration is that you have Greer in charge of the trade portfolio, but Lutnick\u2019s in charge of Section 232 investigations [restricting foreign import on national security grounds] and that\u2019s where a lot of the sensitive issues are,\u201d said Cutler, now vice-president of the Asia Society Policy Institute.<\/p>\n

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\u2018Trump whisperer\u2019<\/p>\n

Greer cut his trade negotiating teeth as chief of staff to Robert Lighthizer, US trade representative in Trump\u2019s first presidency, who played the leading role in renegotiating Washington\u2019s economic ties with Mexico and Canada, and the former North America Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which was replaced with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in 2020.<\/p>\n

He was chosen for the position when Lighthizer apparently indicated he did not wish to be considered for the post a second time. \u201cGreer plays the same role that Lighthizer played,\u201d said Reinsch, who noted, however, that Greer lacked his former boss\u2019s intimate understanding of Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe figures out legal ways to do what Trump wants to do, and to get as much of Trump\u2019s objectives accomplished as is possible within the framework that he has to operate in,\u201d added Reinsch. \u201cSo that allows him to come back to Trump on occasion and say, \u2018there\u2019s a better way to get what you want than what you\u2019ve employed so far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another complicating element may be Peter Navarro, the president\u2019s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing.<\/p>\n

He is reckoned by analysts to be a \u201cTrump whisperer\u201d on Canada, despite a belief that his influence has been marginalized compared with the first Trump presidency, when it was widely joked, according to Reinsch, that Lighthizer was reluctant to travel outside Washington for fear that Navarro would persuade the president to adopt impractical trade policies in his absence.<\/p>\n

Navarro, who went to jail for contempt of Congress<\/a> after refusing to comply with a subpoena from the committee investigating the 6 January 2021 insurrection, vented in an appearance on the C-Span network last week.<\/p>\n

Asked to respond to an article<\/a> in the Guardian by the Canadian writer Jen Gerson, who wrote that US retaliation should be taken as a warning by other western allies, Navarro said: \u201cMadam, your country screws us. You\u2019re in bed with the Chinese and playing games with us.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook in the mirror at your tariffs codes. You are the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blame game<\/p>\n

Navarro has voiced concern that Canada has allowed the import of nearly 50,000 Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles under a most favoured nation agreement, which he fears will ultimately end up crossing the border to be sold in the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cNavarro\u2019s worried that the whole USMCA negotiation is really about how do we prevent Canada and Mexico from being a backdoor to Chinese stuff,\u201d Reinsch said. \u201cHe would probably have argued last week that the deal wasn\u2019t any good because it wouldn\u2019t shut down Chinese imports in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markOther countries are watching the developments with Canada very closelyWendy Cutler<\/p>\n

Yet the focus on Trump\u2019s advisers cannot obscure the president\u2019s own fixation with tariffs. Carney referred to agreements being \u201csigned in pencil\u201d, suggesting that Trump would try to change terms even after the details had been hammered out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe larger Canadian objection was not due to interagency American disagreement,\u201d Reinsch said. \u201cTrump has very strong fixed views on trade. He thinks tariffs are good. So if you\u2019re going to blame somebody, don\u2019t blame Lutnick or Greer. Blame Trump, because I\u2019m quite confident he had the last word on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regardless of where blame is apportioned, the consequences of Carney\u2019s defiance will reverberate beyond Canada, analysts say, as other countries forced to confront Trump\u2019s threats of tariffs reassess and recalibrate how they should respond.<\/p>\n

\u201cOther countries are watching the developments with Canada very closely,\u201d said Cutler. \u201cSome of our other trading partners have expressed similar frustrations [to the Canadians] to me privately, and so we could be at a turning point.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is possible that what we\u2019re experiencing with Canada now spreads to other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having reportedly read Victor Hugo\u2019s Les Mis\u00e9rables, in French, during a military tour of duty in Iraq, Jamieson…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-878348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}