Catenaa, Saturday, August 22, 2026- US trade talks with Canada collapsed late Friday night, setting in motion steep 50% tariffs on a wide swath of Canadian goods.
After weeks of talks, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that while important progress had been made, “that progress has not been enough to meet our objectives for Canadians.”
“As a result, this evening, I have decided to suspend trade negotiations with the US and have directed Canada’s negotiators to return to Ottawa,” Carney said in an emailed statement minutes before the deadline.
The tariffs impact about $20 billion worth of US imports from Canada, according to the US Trade Representative’s office. The import taxes will hit everything from hockey sticks to some building materials, liquors and certain kinds of clothing.
Carney says Canada will immediately retaliate against the US: “Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses,” he said.
The failure by American and Canadian trade negotiators to reach a deal came after nearly two weeks of furious talks. It was also a dramatic reversal from Tuesday, when Trump paused the tariffs for three days, writing on social media that the two sides “have a DEAL!”
Officials on both sides had seemed optimistic about a deal up until the very last moment. On Thursday, the Canadian minister responsible for US trade relations met with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer for several hours.
“We’re very close, we continue to make progress, and we’re going to stay here and do the work that is necessary until we get to that point,” Dominic LeBlanc told reporters as he left Greer’s office late Thursday.
Canadian negotiators met again with their US counterparts on Friday, and talks stretched until the final hours of the day. Officials remained at the U.S. Trade Representative’s office past 10:30 pm E.T. Friday. But ultimately, the two sides were unable to reach a compromise.
In his statement, Carney said, “Last-minute changes in the US proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”
“We have recognized from the beginning that America has changed, and that we will not return to our old relationship,” Carney said. “Canada has what the world wants. And we will not allow any nation to determine our future.”
Greer said in a statement early Saturday that Canada “declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week.”
“Despite the US offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walkbacks of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days,” he said.
“We don’t have new talks planned with the Canadians,” Greer added in a Saturday morning interview on Fox News Channel. “We’ve said enough, and so we’ve taken countermeasures.” He also said the US would “respond to Canadian retaliation.”
