Carney Says Canada Wants to ‘Get Serious’ on Trade Talks

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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his top Cabinet ministers are in contact with White House officials and want to have “serious” negotiations about trade, as U.S. trading partners brace for President Donald Trump’s next barrage of tariffs.

“With respect to the president, the point is to have substantive discussions. The point is not theater, the point is to get serious — sovereign nation to sovereign nation,” Carney told reporters March 25 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “That’s what we’re looking for in terms of putting this trading relationship back on a new path — a new path that works best for Canada, given the unreliability of America.”

Trump said March 24 he’ll announce import taxes on automobiles in the coming days — a move that would inflict damage on Canada’s manufacturing sector — but indicated some nations will receive breaks from next week’s so-called “reciprocal” tariffs. His comments created further confusion about his plans for a sweeping tariff announcement scheduled for April 2.

Carney has said he’s prepared for discussions with the U.S., but that Trump must drop his taunts about Canada becoming the 51st U.S. state.

The new prime minister hasn’t spoken with Trump since being sworn in on March 14 and is now in the middle of an election campaign, with ballots set to be cast on April 28. Carney has said he believes Trump is waiting for the outcome of the vote before speaking with Canada’s leader.

“We have learned, and others have learned over time, that there is an unpredictability to U.S. trade policy. There’s certainly an opacity to U.S. trade policy,” Carney said.

“How does one respond to that? What you do is you prepare for the worst. And part of that is what we have done in the last weeks,” he added, pointing to his government’s changes to unemployment insurance for workers and financial support programs for businesses.

So far, Canada has placed retaliatory tariffs on about C$60 billion ($42 billion) worth of U.S.-made goods in response to Trump’s tariffs on a wide array of things, including Canadian-manufactured steel and aluminum. Carney pointed out that the government has an additional list of C$95 billion of U.S. products on which it plans to apply import taxes on April 2, if Trump follows through on threats for more tariffs against Canada.

The U.S. imported about $413 billion of goods from Canada last year, led by energy, while exporting $349 billion to its northern neighbor, according to U.S. Commerce Department data.

Carney, 60, also mentioned the government’s focus on Canadian procurement and cross-country trade to strengthen the domestic economy and make it less vulnerable to Trump’s threats. He has pledged to remove all trade barriers between provinces by July 1.

“It shows the Americans that we’re stronger,” he added. “We’re going to get stronger where they get weaker because they are inflicting harm on themselves with these tariffs, and that is going to put us in a better place for negotiations…