Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks at a press conference in the West Block of Parliament Hill on April 14, 2026 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Andrei Ivanov | AFP | Getty Images
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday fired back after Trump administration Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick claimed that Ottawa was blocking trade talks with the United States for political purposes.
“With all due respect, I don’t believe that an appointed unelected minister from the United States is an expert on Canadian politics,” Carney said at a news conference in Thunder Bay, northwestern Ontario.
“We’re always going to stand up for Canada’s best interests,” Carney said after accusing the United States of arguing differently about the red lines in the trade deal now that negotiations have been abandoned.
But the prime minister insisted a deal that benefits both Canada and the United States is possible. “When the U.S. side is ready, we are ready to sit down and conclude a deal,” he said.
But late Thursday morning, President Donald Trump appeared less eager to rekindle the frosty relationship between the United States and Canada.
“It’s very good for Canadian politicians like Prime Minister Carney to make President Donald J. Trump an ‘enemy’ until the economy collapses,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “If that happens, it will be very bad for politics – worse than anything that has ever happened to Canadian politicians. Just look!”
The previous day, on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Mr. Carney was responding to Mr. Lutnick’s claim that Canada had “abandoned” a nearly complete trade deal with the United States “for political reasons alone.”
Lutnick argued that Canada treated President Donald Trump “disrespectfully” but will change its tune after mid-October “because we have an election coming up.”
Canada has upcoming special or by-elections in several electoral or parliamentary constituencies.
Negotiators withdrew from trade negotiations last month after failing to reach a deal by President Trump’s Aug. 22 deadline to impose new 50% tariffs on about $20 billion worth of Canadian imports.
Canada retaliated with “dollar-for-dollar” tariffs on U.S. goods scheduled to go into effect next week.
Both sides have accused the other of making unreasonable demands at the last minute. Lutnick said Wednesday that Canada tried to add tariff relief on medium- and heavy-duty trucks hours before President Trump’s tariff deadline. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer previously rejected Carney’s assertion that Canada’s French language requirement was a sticking point in trade talks.
Carney pushed back in remarks Thursday. “There are some issues that the United States was debating until the last hour. The red line was not going to change…’It’s our way or our highway, go or leave’ attitude.”
“All of a sudden they don’t care about Canadian language and culture and those elements,” Carney said, adding, “That’s a good thing. We welcome that. We care about those issues.”
Regarding the dispute over trucks, Mr. Carney accused the United States of backtracking on its demands.
“They’re like, ‘Of course, we weren’t going to keep them out.’ Well, they were going to keep them out,” he said. “Some of what they’re saying now is different from what they were drawing the line on.”
