Oh, and with
NAFTA CUSMA USMCA the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Trump administration had hoped to negotiate a
grander bargin (?) with Canada than simply a renewal of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement but it doesn’t seem possible at the moment, the U.S. ambassador to Canada said Tuesday?
Pete Hoekstra, speaking about the state of Canada-U.S. relations, said the White House had been looking for an agreement that encompassed numerous subjects, including
defence.
Is America trying to stuff a defence agreement into the same trade agreement with Mexico also?
A senior government source said there has been little contact between the U.S. and Canadian teams since late August
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“Americans were hopeful that we could negotiate a
bigger deal,” Mr. Hoekstra told an Ottawa event hosted by the Canadian International Council on Tuesday.
Mr. Trump has said the U.S. doesn’t need Canadian autos despite the fact this country’s vehicle assembly and auto parts industry are highly integrated with the U.S. market and North American-produced products normally travel tariff-free between countries.
“I mean, there is so much that we do together, where our economies are integrated, they graft off of each other and those types of things,” the envoy said,
& then along came Trump tarrif’ing the planet.
(Since returning to office earlier this year, President
Donald Trump has hit Canada with a string of tariffs: 50 per cent on steel and aluminum, 25 per cent on autos and 35 per cent on any goods traded outside the USMCA, with the exception of oil, gas and potash, at 10 per cent. His administration has also significantly hiked duties on Canadian softwood)
“On
trade, whether it’s energy, whether it’s automotive, whether it’s nuclear, defence and all of those types of things, we were hoping that we would not just renegotiate CUSMA, but that we could take it into being something much bigger,” he said, referencing the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, another name for the USMCA.
“It’s obvious(?), at least at this point in time, that that’s not going to happen,” Mr. Hoekstra said? He did not fully explain what was preventing such a deal.
Is he referring to Trump? Who knows…?
Mr. Hoekstra noted the United States was formally kicking off public consultations on the USMCACUSMANAFTA as Washington begins identifying what a revised trilateral deal would look like.
In March,
Mark Carney talked of undertaking comprehensive negotiations on a new economic and security relationship with the United States but recently the Prime Minister has talked in smaller terms: of negotiating
tariff deals with the U.S. in key sectors and renegotiating USMCANAFTACUSMA.
Talks between Canada and the United States stalled in the lead up to a Aug. 1 deadline imposed by Mr. Trump. Mr. Carney, who in late August dropped Canadian retaliatory tariffs on some U.S. products, told reporters Sept. 5 that he wants to secure some relief for strategic sectors battered by U.S. tariffs, but he stressed
there is no certainty that this will happen.
Hoekstra then says, “We understand the economics and how you’ve built your economy around those types of things, but over a period of time, in some of these critical industries, you know, we’re going to see some of that moving back into the United States.”
The envoy said Washington appreciates Canada’s trade actions on Chinese EVs and steel. “We very much appreciate the decision that Canada has made, and we recognize the cost that you are paying for that,” Mr. Hoekstra said. “It’s contained China; let’s work on this stuff together, and we will recognize the economic impact that it has had on Canada.”…
So…?
Trump could see the importation of cheap Chinese EVs into Canada as a backdoor into the U.S. market and impose his own tariff on canola
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Pete Hoekstra said White House wanted agreement encompassing numerous subjects, including defence
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Regardless of what is negotiated, or what is agreed to, what certainty will Canada or Mexico have that America will honour anything in a trade agreement? Will any trade agreement with America be worth the paper it’s written on under this current administration?
Hundreds of temporary foreign workers in P.E.I.’s seafood processing sector have seen their hours cut or faced layoffs this year after China imposed tariffs on Canadian seafood, according to the Cooper Institute.
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In 2024, our canola exports were $14.5 billion. This year, the harvest is in danger.
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