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Mark Carney: Why I Rejected Trump’s Trade Deal

The prime minister on saying no to Washington and how Canada plans to withstand the fallout

W hat follows are the remarks Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered in Ottawa after the suspension of Canada–United States trade talks on August 22, 2026.

I’d like take this opportunity to update Canadians on developments in our trade negotiations with the United States. I’m going to go through why we’re walking away from a bad deal and what comes next.

For much of our history, Canadians have been able to count on favourable trade winds: a stable relationship with the United States, increasingly open access to the American market, and rules that both countries understood and respected. Those winds haven’t simply changed direction. The weather itself has changed. We can’t control the storm that blows in from Washington. We can, however, chart a new course by building Canada strong at home and diversifying our trading relationships abroad. We are masters in our own house and the partner of choice abroad.

For over a year, Canada has worked intensively and in good faith with the United States to negotiate a new comprehensive trade deal. We’ve been pragmatic, patient, and persistent. We pursued every opportunity to reach an agreement that protects Canadian workers and their families, that strengthens our economy, and that respects Canadian sovereignty.

We’ve been under no illusions. We recognized, from the start, that America has changed. Early last year, I observed that the decades-long process of steadily increasing integration between our economies was over. Our government understood before many that America would transform all of its commercial relationships, that it would put a series of tariffs on its closest allies, and use economic integration as a weapon. We recognize that sometimes its signature was written in pencil.

We worked in that context to try to strike a fair deal on which Canadian businesses and workers could rely. Our goal has always been to get the best deal for Canadians, never a deal at any price or on any time frame. Last month, when the United States announced another round of unjustified tariffs, I gave our negotiating team a new mandate: to seek a fair deal negotiated in good faith. I believe that people on the ground, on both sides of our border, want this relationship to work. The bonds between Canadians and Americans are long, and they remain strong. A mutually beneficial trade agreement is possible—one that respects our sovereignty, one that builds on our complementary strengths, one that lowers costs for families on both sides of the border, one that creates good jobs for our workers.

Canada has always worked towards these goals, even while America’s attention and dedication to them have wavered. We’ve consistently proposed long-term partnerships, while America has often pursued short-term transactions. The gap between partnership and competitor, unfortunately, has remained too wide in recent days.

So last evening, I instructed our negotiators to return to Ottawa. We cannot accept what they’ve offered, and we will not give what they’ve asked. Over the past year, the US has imposed a series of tariffs that violate its commitment under our agreement with them in Mexico, so-called CUSMA. The United States has continually changed the rationale for these actions, from fentanyl to taxes on US tech giants, to certification of US 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 the trade war, to a television advertisement that quoted Ronald Reagan, to smoke from wildfires while they threatened our communities.

Another prominent justification for US tariffs has been their claim that since the United States runs a “trade deficit” with Canada, we were “ripping them off.” But the US narrow merchandise trade deficit only exists because the US buys so much of its energy from Canada. Canada fuels American growth, supplying 99 percent of their natural gas imports, 85 percent of their electricity imports, 60 percent of their crude oil imports. I don’t think they want us to stop sending any of that energy.

And if you look more broadly at the comprehensive US–Canada trade balance, which includes the many services from financed entertainment that we buy from the United States, that shows a persistent American trade surplus. Most fundamentally, trade is about building mutual strength, creating a relationship that benefits both countries. For example, Canada is the largest customer for US cars. In fact, we buy more American-built cars and trucks than the United Kingdom, Japan, and China combined. It’s the same for American........

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