Toronto Star‘s Allan Woods writes:

Trump has yet to publicly comment on the breakdown in trade talks, but U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told reporters that Canada was offered “the best treatment of any major exporter to our market.”

Without going into detail, he said Canadian negotiators made “new demands and walkbacks of other commitments” that had “upended the careful balance reached in the past days.”

Doing a deal under the conditions Carney described would clearly have undermined Canada’s pivot to new markets by putting Carney firmly under the thumb of the U.S.

As the prime minister described it, he was faced with a trade agreement that was suddenly transformed into an attack on Canadian sovereignty, an attempted psychological annexation that could have turned Canada into an American client state, a sort of North American Belarus.

It does, however, jive with Trump’s repeated 51st state taunts when he returned to the White House.

And Trump’s National Security Strategy said of America’s neighbours in the Western Hemisphere: “We want other nations to see us as their partner of first choice, and we will (through various means) discourage their collaboration with others.”

So Carney’s accounting of the behind-the-scenes talks shouldn’t come as a total surprise.

And the fact that Canadian negotiators walked away rather than acquiesce should be seen less as a show of Canadian defiance than of Carney’s consistency. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports:

President Donald Trump told Canadian leaders on Monday to “fall in line” or face consequences that would be “far WORSE” than the tariffs he has already imposed as Prime Minister Mark Carney accused Washington of trying to subordinate Canada.

Trump’s warning on social media came as he threatened new 50% tariffs on Canadian vehicles, auto parts and steel amid escalating tensions between the two countries.

Carney said U.S. trade demands had confirmed Canada’s fears that Washington was seeking to dismantle its auto industry. Nonetheless, he said his country remained willing to negotiate, but only if the United States approached the talks as a partnership between sovereign countries.

“An attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States” is “not something we’re going to accept,” Carney said. [Continue reading…]