Emerging Trade Deal With America Could Be Tough Sell for Canada’s Carney

TORONTO — California wines and Kentucky bourbon may soon return to the shelves of Canadian liquor stores but Canadians are not necessarily thrilled by the prospect.Prime Minister Mark Carney is asking provincial leaders to lift their bans on the sale of American alcohol at government-run stores as part of a developing deal to end a year and a half of trade friction between the North American neighbors. But surveys show a large majority of Canadians opposing any retreat from retaliatory measures like the liquor ban unless America fully revokes crippling tariffs imposed by President Trump on key Canadian industries including autos, steel and aluminum.“In every province, it’s basically 80 percent support” for the liquor bans, the chief strategy officer of polling firm Pollara Strategic Insights, Dan Arnold, said in an interview with the Toronto Star on Wednesday. In a recent survey, he added, 42 percent of respondents said they will continue to boycott American wine and spirits even if they go back on sale.The ban has been costly for the American liquor industry, which lost $357 million in sales last year alone, Bloomberg reported last month. Once the top market for exports of California wine at 36 percent, Canada accounted for just 12 percent of foreign sales in 2025.While few other details of the emerging trade deal have been made public ahead of a Friday night negotiating deadline, analysts predict Canada will make other unpopular concessions in exchange for a reduction — but not full removal — of Mr. Trump’s most onerous tariffs. These include a lifting of restrictions on government procurements of some other American products; a rollback of retaliatory tariffs on American autos; and an adjustment of a quota on American dairy products that is popular with Canadian farmers but has long rankled the United States.However Mr. Carney — a former central banker serving in his first elected job — faces potential political blowback if he concedes too much in exchange for too little, such as the predicted halving of existing American tariffs of 50 percent on steel and 25 percent on autos. A KPMG survey cited by the upstate New York news portal NNY360 found about 70 percent of Canadian business leaders want their government to use any leverage it has available in negotiating with Mr. Trump.Another survey by the Vancouver-based Angus Reid Institute found that 62 percent of Canadians want Mr. Carney to hit back with retaliatory tariffs if Mr. Trump acts on his threat to impose new 50 percent levies on more than $20 billion of Canadian goods at 12:01 am Saturday. Only 19 percent want to take that option off the table and just 7 percent want to offer up concessions.The leader of the opposition Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, is poised to strike, demanding that Mr. Carney stop making “unilateral concessions” to Mr. Trump, such as a deal to share toll profits on a new Canadian-built bridge over the Detroit River.Canadian anger at the Trump administration is so deep that a petition calling for the American ambassador, Pete Hoeksra, to be declared persona non grata and expelled from the country has received 247,000 signatures.“We are famously the nicest people in the world. We famously apologize when we haven’t done a thing wrong. So it takes a lot to get this many Canadians to really think that you’re not welcome here,” the Green Party leader, Elizabeth May, was quoted as saying by Politico.“He’s the least diplomatic U.S. ambassador to Canada ever. He’s the most obnoxious, bullying, offensive and disagreeable person who’s ever been the U.S. ambassador to Canada,” Ms. May added. She is expected to present the petition to the House of Commons in the fall.In an earlier interview with Politico, Mr. Hoekstra was quoted saying, “It’s not about me, OK? Donald Trump did not tell me to go to Canada and become liked. Matter of fact, I think he would have said ‘If you go to Canada and you’re liked, it probably means that you’re not doing your job.’”Mr. Trump’s latest tariff threat, announced July 20, has been widely interpreted not as a final position but as a negotiating tactic designed to force Ottawa back to the table after months of what one commentator described as its “ragging the puck” — a hockey metaphor for killing time by simply keeping the puck away from the opponent rather than trying to score.The American president appears to have been drawn toward a broad deal easing some pre-existing tariffs by the prospect of resuscitating the Keystone Pipeline, a long-controversial project that would facilitate the shipment of oil from Alberta to refineries on the Gulf coast. “The great Keystone XL Pipeline, long ago killed by Sleepy Joe Biden, may be awoken from the grave!” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social account late Tuesday.The pipeline project, killed twice by Democratic presidents but revived by Mr. Trump in his first term, has long been reviled by environmentalists in both countries but was supported by previous Canadian governments because of the expected economic boost from increased oil exports.Other potential sweeteners reportedly sought by Washington include”digital trade alignment” and guarantees that Canada will maintain or increase its supply of oil to America and grant the United States the right of first refusal on critical minerals.The United States trade representative, Jamieson Greer, said Wednesday the emerging deal could make “the continent a manufacturing and energy powerhouse.” But even that could be a tough sell in Canada, given Mr. Carney’s widely quoted remarks at Davos where he spoke of a “rupture” in the traditional United States-Canada relationship and his efforts since to diversify Canadian trade away from a reliance on the American market.Such agreements “would tie Canada’s economy more closely to the U.S.’s, and if there is one thing Mr. Trump has taught us in this second term, it’s that we can’t expect any reliable guarantees in return,” commentator Colin Clark wrote Wednesday in the business-oriented Toronto Globe and Mail.

Emerging Trade Deal With America Could Be Tough Sell for Canada’s Carney

Emerging Trade Deal With America Could Be Tough Sell for Canada’s Carney

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