What do we know about the reasons Canada’s trade deal with America fell apart?

Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to the media during a press conference at the Rio Tinto aluminum smelter in Saguenay, Que., on Aug. 6, 2026. Photo by Francis Vachon /Postmedia

Article content

The trade war between Canada and United States is news, and not just within our two countries. Here’s what the world is saying.

Article content

Why did the deal fall apart?

Article content

Article content

According to analysis by Bloomberg, the U.S.-Canada trade talks collapsed over a range of issues where the text of a potential deal was at odds with what Canada believed it had agreed to.

Article content

Quoting Mark Wiseman, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., the news agency said it wasn’t a single issue that led talks to collapse late Friday, but a variety of things.

Article content

Article content

Wiseman used the metaphor of a handshake deal to buy a house — only for the would-be buyer to learn that appliances weren’t included, the furnace had no warranty, and neither the garage nor the yard were on the same property.

Article content

Article content

“As we drilled down, what we discovered was that what our understanding of what had been agreed to was quite different from what was showing up in the documents,” he told Bloomberg.

Article content

“When that kind of happens once or twice, it’s kind of understandable, but when it happens consistently, and every interpretation is the most negative interpretation,” then it “got to a point” where they walked away.

Article content

What did the U.S. side say?

Article content

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer blamed Canada for walking away. He told the New York Times that the deal would have offered Canada tariff reductions in steel, aluminum, automobiles and lumber, specifically cutting the “majority” of Canadian steel exports to a 25 per cent tariff up to a quota, with anything above that remaining at 50 per cent.

Article content

He added the U.S. would have lowered the aluminum tariff to 25 per cent without a quota and would have cut the tariff on passenger vehicles, suspended more recent tariffs on the same, and eliminated a lumber tariff. Wiseman told Bloomberg that was “broadly accurate.”

Article content

Article content

Article content

What has the prime minister said?

Article content

In remark on Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney alluded to the shifting rationale for tariffs from the U.S. side, “from fentanyl to taxes on U.S. tech giants, to certification of U.S. aircraft, to the sharing of tolls of a bridge that Canada built and paid for, to our dairy policy, to provincial decisions not to sell American alcohol during a trade war, to a television advertisement that quoted Ronald Reagan, to smoke from wildfires, while they threatened our communities.”

Article content

He referred to the latest U.S. tariffs as being “designed to hurt us and divide us,” adding: “They’re a miscalculation … because Canadians will always take care of each other. We know we’re stronger together.”

Article content

Asked for specifics that scuttled the deal, Carney offered up three.

Article content

First, he said, America suddenly wanted to limit tariff relief in the auto industry to cars only, and not medium and heavy trucks, which would have hurt Ford and GM production in Canada. “That precision was a change,” he said.

Article content

“The U.S. introduced, in the last hours, efforts to restrict our ability to have other trade deals,” he added. “We’re the partner of choice in many respects for countries around the world, and the Americans wanted to restrict that. They had language that they wanted to restrict. Unacceptable.”