Just a day or two ago Trump was bragging that it was a done and dusted “a good deal for everybody,”
Officials on both sides had seemed optimistic about a deal up until the very last moment. On Thursday, the Canadian minister responsible for U.S. trade relations met with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer for several hours.
“We’re very close, we continue to make progress and we’re going to stay here and do the work that is necessary until we get to that point,” Dominic LeBlanc told reporters as he left Greer’s office late Thursday.
So what could have possibly happened to the deal? According to Carney apparently Trump’s team pulled a bad faith, last minute, bait-n-switch.
Canadian negotiators met again with their U.S. counterparts on Friday and talks stretched until the final hours of the day. Officials remained at the U.S. Trade Representative’s office past 10:30pm E.T. Friday. But ultimately, the two sides were unable to reach a compromise.
In his statement, Carney said “last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”
Quelle surprise; so here we are. Trump is going to slap a 50% tariff on select Canadian goods and Canada will retaliate dollar-for-dollar. To quote Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew: “Very wise people have said, you can’t get a good deal with a bad person. I think that applies here.”
Sources tell me that the talks were going along well, and they had everything lined up, but then on Friday, Jamieson Greer stepped in and screwed the whole negotiation up. He told the Americans that Canada was getting too good of a deal, and basically ripped up all of the agreements to date.
He’s the guy who still does not understand that American importers pay the tariffs. He’s an idiot.
So thanks buddy.
ETA: I hope that the sale of US bonds starts on Monday. Carney has a lot of friends in the international markets.
I hope the business community in the US understands how bad this is. Deliberately cutting off the supply of cheap (by which I mean reasonably priced) goods from Canada does not create cheap alternatives in the US.
From article: [quote] To hit Canada, he reached back to the Great Depression, invoking Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to threaten 50% tariffs on products that account for about 5% of Canadian exports to the United States.
Nearly a century ago, with the U.S. and world economies in collapse, Congress passed the 1930 tariff law, imposing taxes on imports from around the world. Known as the Smoot-Hawley tariffs after their congressional sponsors, they are notorious among economists and historians for limiting world commerce and making the Great Depression worse.
Section 338, which has never been used before to impose tariffs, authorizes the president to slap import taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries that have discriminated against U.S. businesses. No investigation is required to justify the levies. Nor is there any limit on how long they can stay in place.To hit Canada, he reached back to the Great Depression, invoking Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to threaten 50% tariffs on products that account for about 5% of Canadian exports to the United States.[/quote]
A sycophantic Supreme Court still found Trump’s original tariffs bogus, based on a false and contrived emergency to sidestep a deal Trump already signed.
I would have been disheartened had Carney signed such a mess, more so if he gave away the right to retaliate, control defence purchases, control digital rights or agree to tariffs so high, compared to artificial anchor numbers, they threaten key industries.
Canada has not yet retaliated much. Americans tired of high prices will pay yet more for fuel, fertilizer, food, steel, aluminum and building supplies. Canada is America’s best customer. Canadians are tired of Trump’s arrogance. To be sure, more Americans agree with Canada than Trump and the Supremes are likely to say Section 338 has to be applied more reasonably, more specifically, and with more evidence sector by sector.
When Congress reconvenes in ten days, 26 states have already expressed concern about these tariff effects. Will it hurt Canada? They say a hit if 0.5% GDP and up to 100k jobs out of 23m. Not nothing. Worth compromises. But not being taken to the cleaners for a generation as an emboldened Trump throws away other signed agreements and shows disdain for fairness, the rule of law, and diplomatic norms.
If Canada is not America’s friend, than America has few friends indeed. It might take a decade or more to undo this damage.
Isn’t this routine when negotiating with Trump. Both Jared(?) and the Ayatollah(?) were happy with an “MoU” but Trump vetoed it hoping for something a bit more mollycoddling for him personally. (And did the same thing happen a 2nd time? By now, if I were Iran I’d not negotiate at all without an irrevocable down payment on financial relief.)
Is this the sort of “deal-making” that Donald Jesus Trump (“Graduated first in my class from Hargvards Business School – Not many know that”) advocates in his (ghost-written) Art of the Deal?
I guess it depends on how much one’s definition of “much” is. Border states are complaining of the lack of Canadians crossing the border to shop and play tourist, and many Canadians are refusing to vacation in the US. Alcohol-producing states, like California and Kentucky, are complaining that revenues are down, because some Canadian provinces have banned American alcohol.
(Note for our American friends who may not be aware: alcohol in Canada is under the control of the provinces. Our federal government has nothing to do with it; and thus, cannot do anything to force American alcohol back on the shelves of liquor stores and bars. Trump trying to force the alcohol question into negotiations with Canada’s federal government is laughable. Then, there’s the question of “if the provinces put American alcohol back on the shelves as a concession, will Canadians buy it?” Most Canadians I know won’t buy it on principle any more, even if it reappears.)
Trump has not yet realized, or perhaps refuses to realize, that the cost of any import tariffs he imposes is borne by the American consumer. Not the exporting country. He’s not hurting Canada by imposing tariffs; he’s hurting his own people and businesses, who cannot do without the goods that Canada supplies.
Again, it depends on what your definition of “much” is.
Meh, maybe it will provide Canadians the opportunity to discover Scotland’s fine single malts.
Or, for that matter, Canadian whiskies that are not advertised in popular publications or on TV. Collingwood, Glen Breton, Forty Creek … the list of terrific Canadian whiskies goes on. Fine sipping whiskies, all of them; and all of them better than what gets advertised.
There’s lots of things Trump has never realized, and they all make this mess worse. With the alcohol example, he’s never understood that negotiating with a government doesn’t mean squat, if the people decide not to buy the products, no matter how great a concession he gets from the government. The same thing happened when we renegotiated NAFTA. Canada gave him an increase in access to the Canadian dairy market. In response, Canadians by and large just refused to buy the newly-available US milk that showed up on our shelves, because we collectively decided to tell him to go fuck himself with that milk. Jack Daniels will be the same way.
As for the “negotiations”, I posted about this on reddit a few hours ago. There are reasons why none of his deals last, and a big part of that is his belief that for him to win, someone else must lose. When he sees the other country agree to a “deal”, he immediately thinks that they only reason they would do that is if they somehow put one over on him. So obviously that deal was bad for him, which makes it the worst deal ever, and who even agreed to that?!? So he’s constantly in a cycle of making deals, bitching about those deals, cancelling the deals, and then demanding a new deal where he gets even more, and the other side gets even less.
That’s what happened here, just in real-time, not months later. He heard that Canada was finally amenable to the proposed terms, and he decided that meant he hadn’t properly fucked us.
That’s exactly what I’m hearing as well. There was a deal about to be finalized, agreed to by both parties of adults, and then Trump sent in Greer to completely fuck up the negotiations.
Trump thinks that international negotiations on trade is just the same as telling the company that installed windows on your tower that you’re not going to pay him.
My bad. Apparently it was Howard Lutnick who came in at the last minute and wrecked the agreements that had been worked on for months by the negotiating teams.
I’m thinking he WANTS to cause a 1930’s style depression, so he can scoop up entire industries for pennies on the dollar. He’s modelling himself after the Russian oligarchs who did the same after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It doesn’t matter if was Greer or Lutnick – the dirty tactics of going back on your word at the very last minute has the Orange Felon’s style written all over it. Canada had no choice at that point but to walk out of the trade talks which were now obviously worthless.
The Orange Peril clearly has no interest in finalizing a trade deal with Canada, and never negotiates in good faith even when he does want a deal. This is affecting me personally as he may be sending our economy into a recession just as I’m putting my house up for sale. I’m sure that many thousands of Canadian small business owners and employees feel just the same way. I knew back in 2024 that electing this malevolent idiot would be a disaster, but I could never have imagined how big a disaster.
“Again”? They’ve been off the shelves in most provinces for over a year. Ontario instituted the boycott of American liquor 18 months ago, in February, 2025. All of the liquor in Ontario comes through the LCBO which, incidentally, is the largest single purchaser of liquor in the world. No wonder American distillers and wine makers are complaining.
I hope Alberta and Saskatchewan read the room and follow the other provinces. To date they (particularly Alberta) seem to think that sucking up to the bully is the way to go.
I’ll note in passing that Ontario is being very fair in its American liquor boycott. After initially banning Bacardi rum along with all other American liquor, it was soon back on the shelves. Because it comes from Puerto Rico, and as a US territory but not a state, its citizens cannot vote in Congressional or presidential elections and therefore cannot be blamed for the current disaster perpetrated by the Orange Felon.
Not doubting you, but if I tell a particular neighbor that’s why the prices for the lumber he needs have gone sky high, he may want to know where I saw that; and I’d like to have an answer he’s more likely to take seriously than ‘on a message board by somebody I think is making sense.’
It is easy not to buy bourbon. No export taxes, nothing extra added so far on potash or energy or minerals. Movements not to buy American have been fairly halfhearted so far.
I know lots of people who sold homes in the US or vacationed elsewhere or don’t go to Las Vegas anymore for professional conferences.
This has had some effect on some states, but most Americans don’t much yet notice.