U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney during a work lunch as part of the G7 Summit in Evian, eastern France, June 16, 2026. The G7 summit is scheduled to be held in the French town of Evian-les-Bains near Switzerland from June 15 to 17, and will be attended by heads of state, as well as EU foreign policy chiefs and ministers from Brazil, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. (Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Evelyn Hochstein AFP | Getty Images
Trade negotiations between the United States and Canada broke down on Friday, prompting the Trump administration to impose new 50% tariffs.
Negotiators on both sides have been working toward a deal all week, at times suggesting it was close. President Donald Trump had said a deal would be finalized soon, pushing back the original Wednesday deadline hours before it was set to go into effect. Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters Thursday that a deal is “very close.”
But both sides blamed the other on Friday, as tariffs affecting about $20 billion in Canadian exports, including wine, furniture, dairy products, cement, clothing, fishing rods and hockey equipment, went into effect Saturday morning.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement Friday that despite efforts toward a deal, “progress is not sufficient to achieve our goals for Canadians.” “Last-minute changes to the terms proposed by the United States are unfair, uneconomic, and call into question the credibility of any agreement.”
Secretary Carney said in a statement that Canada would retaliate against the new tariffs “dollar for dollar.”
“Canada has refused to finalize the trade agreement based on the terms agreed to earlier this week,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamison Greer wrote in a post on X early Saturday morning.
Greer added that in this week’s negotiations, the U.S. “agreed to offer Canada even better treatment, including significantly lower tariffs on steel, aluminum, automobiles and lumber.” But, he wrote, “Canada continues its long-standing retaliation against the United States, including, among other things, outright bans on certain American goods and services.”
In July, the Trump administration signed three proclamations imposing 50% tariffs on a wide range of Canadian products, which the government said were due to trade discrimination against several U.S. products and industries, including automobiles, alcohol and dairy products. The tariffs are based on Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which authorizes the president to impose tariffs of up to 50% on goods from countries found to be discriminatory against the United States, tariffs that have not been in place since 1949.
The failure to reach an agreement adds further complexity to the increasingly tense relationship between the United States and Canada. The two countries were already at the table negotiating a trilateral trade agreement with Mexico, known as USMCA, but the deal was not renewed in July over concerns about the U.S. trade deficit. President Trump once called the deal “the best deal we’ve ever had.”
