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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney accused the United States on Saturday of making a last-minute “power play” by trying to restrict Canada’s ability to strike trade deals with other countries, offering new details about what he said caused negotiations between the two sides to collapse.
Carney said the U.S. introduced new demands in the final hours of negotiations involving Canada’s other trading relationships, its auto sector and protections for Canadian culture and the French language.
“The U.S. introduced at the last hours, in the last hour, efforts to restrict our ability to have other trade deals,” Carney told reporters.
Asked what he believed the U.S. was trying to accomplish, Carney responded: “It’s a power play. It’s a power play and, you know, [it] becomes a question of sovereignty.”
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The comments came a day after Carney suspended negotiations and ordered Canada’s trade team back to Ottawa as President Donald Trump’s 50% tariffs on roughly $28 billion in Canadian goods took effect.
Canada said it plans to match the U.S. tariffs dollar for dollar, with Carney saying Saturday that the retaliation will target sectors including steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper and electronics.
The measures will take effect the Tuesday after Labor Day on Sept. 8.
Washington has disputed Carney’s account of why the negotiations broke down.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Friday that Canada declined to finalize terms agreed to earlier in the week, accusing Ottawa of making new demands and walking back previous commitments.
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“Tonight [Friday], Canada declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week,” Greer said in a statement. “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.”
Greer said the U.S. offered Canada significant tariff reductions on steel, aluminum, autos and lumber, along with a broader economic and national security partnership covering digital trade, critical minerals, aerospace and export controls.
Carney offered a different account Saturday.
“In short, they asked too much, and they offered too little,” he said.
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Autos were another major sticking point. Carney said the two sides disagreed over tariff levels, the treatment of Canadian content and which vehicles would be covered by a potential agreement.
He said the U.S. also continued efforts to seek changes involving Canada’s protections for its culture and the French language, which Carney said Ottawa would not accept.
The breakdown came just days after Trump paused the 50% tariffs for three days and announced that the U.S. and Canada, subject to final documentation, had reached a “DEAL!”
Carney said Saturday that the two sides had made significant progress before the negotiations unraveled.
Canada is now preparing additional support for businesses affected by the tariffs, particularly small and medium-sized companies, with Carney saying the government will release details alongside its retaliatory measures.
Asked whether the latest escalation amounted to a full-scale trade war, Carney said Canada was responding to an attack.
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“We’re attacked, like you’re at war when you get attacked, we got attacked,” Carney said.
“We’ve got the reserves, we’ve got resilience, we have the plan, we get the focus, we respond, we’re going to focus on what we can control, we are going to build.”
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