TORONTO — Canada’s Conservatives are ratcheting up attacks on Prime Minister Mark Carney for moving too slowly to secure a trade deal with President Donald Trump, opening a new political fight in a dispute with consequences on both sides of the border.
This is becoming a wedge issue in Ottawa because the closer the deadline for a review of the North American trade agreement gets, the easier it is for Conservatives to argue Carney is failing to shield Canada from a U.S. trade offensive he has repeatedly promised to stop.
“The tariffs from the United States are actually getting much worse,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told a Toronto business audience Thursday, pointing to Trump’s adjustment to steel and aluminum tariffs earlier this month, changes praised by American trade protectionists.
Windsor-based businesses expect to be impacted “by a billion dollars,” Poilievre said of the Ontario border city already hard hit by Trump’s tariffs on its auto industry.
“There’s no more time to waste, no more jobs we can afford to lose,” Poilievre said, urging Carney to deliver on an election promise he made last year to land a bilateral trade deal to assuage Trump’s tariffs.
Federal Conservatives are looking to save face after the Liberals secured a majority government this week, sweeping three by-elections, virtually ensuring the Tories will be stuck in opposition until 2029. Carney ruled out the possibility of an earlier election.
Poilievre is in a tough spot. Four lawmakers ditched his caucus to join Carney in the past five months, contributing to the seat count math that helped push the Liberals’ minority into a majority territory. Any more defections risk being terminal for his leadership — bringing a new urgency for him to feel out Carney’s sore spots to slow momentum behind the Liberals.
The Conservative leader has taken to attacking Carney’s economic record, accusing the economist who led two G7 central banks of being on the wrong side of major issues such as net zero.
“He’s wrong to suggest that we can have a permanent rupture with our biggest customer and closest neighbor in favor of a strategic partnership for a new world order with the regime in Beijing,” Poilievre said. He repeated his assertion that Carney has made an economic miscalculation in pursuing rapprochement with China — and “permanent rupture” with America.
Under the trilateral agreement, Canada, the United States and Mexico have until July 1 to decide whether to renew the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement — or else enter annual reviews to settle issues until the deal terminates in 2036.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has said he will have to report to Congress on June 1 about the administration’s plans for the USMCA.
Last June at the G7 in Alberta, the rookie prime minister set a goal with Trump to land on a new trade and security deal by July 25. That deal has yet to be reached. Carney has justified the delay, insisting he’s holding out for the best deal for Canadians.
Greer has noted repeatedly that Canada trails Mexico in trade talks — a point that was brought up in a parliamentary committee Thursday with Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc. “What the Americans say to us privately is often consistent with what they say publicly,” LeBlanc said, revealing that he spoke with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last week. He did not share details of their “positive” private conversation.
Canada and the United States resumed trade talks last month after Trump ended negotiations in October, apparently over an anti-tariff ad that played during the World Series.
Greer is heading to Mexico on Monday to continue bilateral USMCA trade talks, while the U.S. and Canada have yet to formally launch their own version with the July 1 deadline just over two months away.
LeBlanc reiterated that the government’s strategy is to roll bilateral trade talks on sectoral tariffs into the USMCA process to achieve a “larger agreement” that would give strategic Canadian sectors relief from U.S. tariffs.
But it’s proving difficult to get Washington to see beyond its “America First” foreign policy.
“The challenge is to get the Americans to a position where they want to make a deal that’s in the interest of both economies,” said LeBlanc without sharing any details on any progress Ottawa has made so far.
