Prime Minister Mark Carney still believes the United States and Canada can reach a “mutually beneficial” trade deal, but first President Donald Trump and his administration need to show Canadians some respect and get serious about negotiations, he told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday.
Since trade talks fell apart, President Trump has not only unleashed additional tariffs, but his usual barrage of social media tirades directed at Canada — a nation he feels has long taken advantage of the U.S. on the subject of trade.
With a sharpie scrawl, Trump even declared he was renaming Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’ and has claimed Canada has nothing the U.S. wants or needs.
U.S. Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added to the animosity with a distasteful social media post mocking female members of a Cadet Training Centre in Vernon, B.C.
Pentagon deputy press secretary Jacob Bliss seemed to defend Hegseth’s post, saying it “speaks for itself.”
On Tuesday, Carney said the post was “beneath their office” and indicative of a nation that isn’t taking Canada, or the increasingly precarious trade situation, seriously.
“When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough, and start being serious about having those (trade) discussions, we can have those discussions,” the PM said. “It’s not constructive,” he said of the online trolling, “but that’s their democracy.”
In all fairness, not all Canadian politicians have chosen the high road during the cross-border sparring.
Notably, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has called Trump “a loser” and mocked him for his previous bankruptcies in the private sector, before toning things down and admitting he got a bit carried away.
Carney, meanwhile, refuted speculation that Ford had anything to do with trade talks falling apart.
“The premiers play a very important role in this process, labour plays an important role in this process, all stakeholders play a role in this process,” Carney said. “We consult with the premiers, take into account their views … (but) the decisions on trade are the decisions of the government of Canada, I’m the Prime Minister, ultimately I’m responsible, with the cabinet, for those decisions.”
While Carney is hopeful a deal can be reached, he didn’t hesitate to defend walking away from the table when it became clear Canada’s sovereignty was at stake.
“The attitude of the United States in these discussions, and subsequently, has been one that core Canadian industries would either be subsidiaries effectively of the United States’ industries, or would put in place terms where those industries would be gradually wound down in Canada and wiped out, of course we are not going to accept those terms.”
Canada has since fired back at the United States with counter tariffs, but Carney still remains hopeful that cooler heads may prevail.
“There is a mutually beneficial deal, there were elements of that mutually beneficial deal that we were moving towards … but we never viewed that we had that deal and it diverged towards the end, and at some point maybe it will converge again.”