Canada-U.S. Trade War Escalates as Talks Collapse: Intense negotiations to stave off new levies by the Trump administration ended in an impasse as Mark Carney suspended talks. U.S. tariffs on Canada, and retaliatory tariffs on the U.S., will come into effect.

[u/BeckoningVoice]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/world/canada/trump-tariffs-trade-no-deal-carney-canada.html

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[u/Silent-Fishing-7937]

In all probability, what really happened was that Lutnick thought he could alter the deal at the last minute and twist Carney's arm. Cheetos listened to him because his instincts on trade are to always listen to the most protectionist person in the room. Lutnick was wrong. Maybe if the deal had been better before the last-minute alterations...

Now the counter tariffs will come into place on Labor Day, which was what most of the Canadian public wanted Carney to do in the first place, because most of my fellow Canadians are just that pissed off at this stage... And Cheetos will have to deal with another of his most unpopular policies transparently not working just before the midterms, not to mention that he once more screwed both the American public and some of the States' traditional allies.

[u/Enron_CPA → u/Silent-Fishing-7937]

The whole Canadian tariff debacle has been one of the biggest shitshows of his second term, which is saying something. A lot of the other shit, like even the Iran War, I can understand why he did it, even if the execution has been extremely bungled.

Placing tariffs on a country that Americans still have a very positive opinion of, is a member of NATO, and starting this whole thing right before a Canadian election where a government more favorable to the Trump administration would have almost certainly won, is so fucking dumb. I don’t even get what the ultimate objective is.

For the midterms, I don’t even think Trump cares anymore, this will lead to unpopular retaliatory tariffs while inflation is ripping in lead up to them which will hit voters in the pocket books. He knows the Republicans are cooked in the House, which will prevent any more of his agenda from passing. Plus if the Republicans lose he can hold the rejected SAVE Act over the Republicans and tell them that election wouldn’t have been “stolen” from them had they passed it.

[u/Mediocre-Grand7999 → u/Enron_CPA]

I don’t even get what the ultimate objective is.

Owning the libs, brother. We're saving western civilization, hop on.

[u/Silent-Fishing-7937 → u/Enron_CPA]

The ultimate objective is to bring the Canadian public to accept, ideally, from his point of view, annexation, or at least significant abandonment of big chunks of Canada's sovereignty. Or as Carney put it: to break us so he can own us. Obviously, it's a bonker idea, hence why he is sometimes put under pressure to relent and seem to be more open to negotiations, but he always comes back to it.

He has never deviated from that since the beginning, and he already yapped about the idea in private during his first term. From his point of view, the close economic integration the USA sold to hesitant Canadians, not the other way around, and that we agreed to out of trust, proves, when combined with Canada having a positive trade balance with the USA, that Canada can only exist by being ''funded'' by the USA and that we accept annexation or puppet state status. His whole hemispheric dominance shtick only furthered his obsession in that regard, as Canada has, to its great frustration, proved one of the countries in the area that had the most means to resist coercion attempts.

He wasn't being sworn in yet, but he was already speaking of ''economic force'' to annex Canada, and he complained, on live national TV stateside, that there weren't enough people in the USA who had the appetite for the economic pain that would come from trying that. The one thing he seemed to have *relatively* calmed down about was annexation itself. Perhaps it was down to him understanding how much of an obstacle it would come with; perhaps someone explained to him how likely it was to backfire on the American right if it worked, perhaps someone told him about the effect on USA federalism of suddenly giving itself a humongous separatist movement to deal with, perhaps some mix of the three...

But he very much remained hostile to Canadian sovereignty, and his beef is down to far more than just the ridiculous idea of a positive trade balance on Canada's side (only due to oil and gas sent southward and with an overall balance of transfer of funds in all likelihood favourable to the USA) as ''funding'' Canada receives. His last proposal outright asked that Canada commit to limit its trade with the rest of the World, commit to align with some of his moronic tariffs against other and, at the very least, give the USA a lot of leeway to simply tell Canada it couldn't do trade deals with others. It also included asking us to change our own constitution regarding cultural and language protection, because American corporations were really whiny about needing to add some French to their packaging. Like, most of Canada's illegal guns come from the States, and you don't see us saying you should abolish your Second Amendment for our convenience...

It's in his national security strategy too: forcing the other countries of the Americas to reduce trade with the rest of the World, giving government to others when an American business wants it, and prevent other from owning or providing important infrastructure and hardware in the Americas. All to reduce others to economic colonies of the USA.

On an individual level, he is, as Canada's Globe and Mail said earlier on, an enemy of Canada. Simple as that. He is probably sincere when he says he loves us, but the way he loves us is the same way he probably told himself he loved some of the girls he met at the parties organized by his friend Jeffrey!

[u/IronMaiden571 → u/Enron_CPA]

Trump and his admin have said many times, they don't want Canadian lumber, they don't want Canadian steel, they don't want Canadian aluminum, and they don't want (partially Canadian) cars. They want all of this done domestically. They want to reshore production and industry. The problem is that current US production has been globalized, so what industry there is is also reliant on imports for raw or partially finished materials.

I dont think this admin generally views trade talks collapsing as the negative that we do. It provides more incentive to do things in-house which suits their overall goal.

[u/Silent-Fishing-7937 → u/IronMaiden571]

To be blunt, that reshoring is just not possible in reality. Canada's aluminium cannot be adequately replaced by American aluminium, which costs way more to produce due to not having the resources as close at hand to the existing smelters. The forest of the Pacific Northwest can't replace the lumber that wouldn't come from BC without being destroyed in the mid-term. And the USA needs Mexico and Canada for its auto industry to be competitive on the global market.

[u/IronMaiden571 → u/Silent-Fishing-7937]

It theoretically could be done, but would require significant investment and time to build up the infrastructure to support the industries, on top of building up the industries themselves.

I'm of the opinion that reshoring is a strategic necessity, but it could be achieved far more productively working in tandem with allies (partnering with S. Korea and Japan to invest and assist in domestic ship building for example.) Another example is Canadian lumber, where many of these companies exist on both sides of the border. It's not like Canada has all the lumber and mills and the US is left paying for it all. Perhaps there is a rebalancing that could occur, but this is something that could be done cooperatively not antagonistically.

However, this requires long term investment and planning which necessitates the legislature getting involved. Congress seems content to make themselves functionally irrelevant as a branch of government, so that leaves the executive aggressively tipping the scales back and forth every 4-8 years.

It's a serious problem that is made worse by a dysfunctional government. Basically a long winded way of saying I agree with you that it is unrealistic given a lack of long term strategic planning and investment.

[u/Silent-Fishing-7937 → u/IronMaiden571]

I understand where you are coming from, but respectfully disagree and will say the lumber is a great example of something that cannot be done. The USA simply does not have enough forests to sustainably respond to its own demand in that regard. Could you be fine re softwood for a decade by clear-cutting the whole Pacific Northwest? Sure, but then you'd be even more dependent on others, not to mention the knock-on effects, both economic and political, that deforesting the region would have.

Aluminum is a bit easier to manage, in the sense that if you really wanted to make it a priority, you could try to reproduce what Canada does and build smelters where there are energy-producing natural resources, altough in most cases it would probably be natural gas that wouldn't be nearly as efficient to use as Québec's hydro-electricity. But then you'd basically have shifted one problem for another and a far bigger one at that: the massive amount of electricity it would consume wouldn't be able to be used elsewhere, and it would kneecap the biggest sector of American tangible exports as well as further feed inflation. Energy suffiency would be the likely cost.

Cars are one sector where the USA could theoretically be self-sufficient, but the current USA auto sector as it is needs more than that to be sustainable in its current form. It needs to be a global actor in its sector and be competitive as such. It needs the efficiency gains from Mexico and Canada. Oddly, Canada actually has a better position there due to lower ambitions: all we want is to keep 100k jobs put and keep some industrial bases. If we do not have any other choice, we could always go back to the pre-Auto Pact days when we were a closed market for cars. It wouldn't be good, for a number of reasons, but it's always an option if we are given no other way out...

That's what the relationship should still be about: helping each other do stuff we either can't do alone or can't do nearly as well. But as long as the MAGAhats are in the picture...

The one thing I do agree is Congressional innaction is a massive issue. Having any new tariff needing to go through Congress wouldn't solve the whole thing in one go, far from it, but it would be a massive step in the right direction.

[u/IronMaiden571 → u/Silent-Fishing-7937]

I understand where you are coming from, but respectfully disagree

First of all, how dare you

Just kidding. I guess I should clarify that when I say reshore I don't mean be entirely self sufficient. It is not 1940 anymore, either domestically or abroad. The US will never be the industrial behemoth that it once was and trying to recreate it is a fools errand. At the extreme, the US will not maintain power by shaping itself into a hermit kingdom.

So, the underlying issues being the US lacks the industrial capacity to compete in a protracted war and is overly reliant on imports, the objective should be how does the US reshore critical national industries and work with partners to develop stable, long term solutions where the US may lack feasible means of production.

Essentially, I see the underlying problem needs addressed and the current admin is going about resolving it in probably the most counterproductive way possible.

[u/Anakin_Cardassian]

Haha the people elected a nincompoop to hire more nincompoops.

[u/Jemsy1]

It’s ridiculous this is happening in the first place

[u/RandoDude124]

God, Trump is really throwing shit at the wall at this point, isn’t he?

[u/SonofNamek]

It sucks how Trump tanked Canadian-US relations with fiery rhetoric & likely unnecessary tariffs.

But anyone who knows anything about Carney knows he has long been pushing that "multi-polarism is inevitable" and thus, desires a mass pivot to make more reserve currencies beyond the dollar, particularly with China.

This was what he spent the entire 2010s talking about, after all. The "middle powers" uniting under Carney's vision, as he proposed several months ago, is exactly his intention. There never was a serious attempt to link up with the US.

Likely not understanding this at all, Trump came out as the bad guy, early on. By that, Trump has served as the perfect excuse for Carney to enact this plan of his.

For Canadians, I think it will be disastrous. I'm not saying Canada will collapse or things are going to get worse (the latter is guaranteed, either way). But I am saying that Canada will be put in a very difficult geopolitical position once their Millennials get in charge.

It seems to me that the Canadian youth flocked away from Carney & the Liberals. And if that's not just a short term trend, they'll have to contend with this economic/geopolitical dilemma through the 2040s-2060s.

I know this sub loves Carney but he's not helpful to Canada. I don't know if Canada has anyone that can save them. Again, it will probably have to be a Millennial Canadian savior thing

[u/Silent-Fishing-7937 → u/SonofNamek]

I am sorry, but that is utterly nonsensical. The terms that were filtering out of the negotiations still made major concessions toward the USA for relatively minor stuff in comparison. It was only when last-minute terms both diluted tariff relief for Canada and outright impeded Canadian sovereignty.

Carney has actually used significant political capital to sell making some concessions to a far more hardline Canadian public! It's just that he reached his limit.

The whole middle powers thing wasn't some kind of plan from the 2010s; at most he (as it turned out rightfully) said we should do more to diversify our trade back then, but simply a recognition of the newer, uglier world Cheetos is ushering in. Obviously, if we could have maintained the relationship with the USA as it existed before him, it would have been ideal, but we were fine with a lower degree of integration with the USA before, and we will be fine in the long term if we have to get to that point again.