U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cited Canada’s recent trade agreement with China that reduced tariffs on some Chinese EVs as a reason for not dropping tariffs on Canada.
And this point I’m inclined to think that the regime makes ridiculous comments just to check what will stick. Not interested in dropping all tariffs on us? Fine. Business would suck but we’ll survive. Threaten to trash CUSMA? Yeah good luck buying potash from Belarus-Russia. We’ll see how that’ll go when food prices spike or shipments get delayed!
Personally I think Bessent is a moron! So are Nutlick and Navarro.This guy is so glaringly unintelligent that he makes Trump seem smarter.
Bessent being uncharacteristally honest.
That lie can be disproved trivially. Like, it’s not even a challenge. And America right now can’t really seem to stick to anything like an agreement – or honour past agreements, like the actual agreement that got Ukraine to give up its nukes.
Why negotiate at all with them? This is totally useless.
The A team goes to work worldwide, the B team works with the US kakistocracy to salvage anything, if possible.
However, there are no deals to be made. Any agreement isn’t worth the paper its written on. They will move the goalpost again and again. As Carney said, “focus on what we can control”.
Business and supply chains don’t reinvent themselves overnight, but we will see how fast this can be done.
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Just let CUSMA expire. We won’t need it anymore.
CUSMA was ignored. Treaties and contract mean nothing to them.
That’s the plan with all the deal making with other countries.
Makes trying to get a deal with the Americans much less important. And makes the Canadian poison much stronger in those potential negotiations.
Basically. On this particular subject I think Carney’s government has walked a pretty solid line. We’re still negotiating with the US in order to get the best outcomes we can for Canadian companies in the short term - you can’t just pivot to new customers overnight - while ultimately working towards a future where we’re no long as dependent on them.
The sad reality is that we’ll never be able to avoid the fact that America is a better customer for many of our products than anyone else, because we can ship to them over land and no one else can (Mexico has little to no overlap with us in terms of major exports other than car manufacturing). But that cuts both ways; Americans love buying from us because we can ship over land. It’s cheaper and faster. So no matter what Bessent says, there’s always going to be room for us to get some deals made, even if we’re never going to see a return to completely tariffless trade.
Cool, good to know there’s no point negotiating.
