Canada suspended trade negotiations with the United States late Friday night after last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms, and 50 percent tariffs on a wide swath of Canadian goods took effect at midnight. Mark Carney said the talks had made progress, but not enough to meet Canada’s objectives for Canadians, and he sent negotiators back to Ottawa.
The timing mattered because the break came after nearly two weeks of talks and after Donald Trump had paused the tariffs for three days on Tuesday while writing that the two sides had a deal. By midnight, that claim had given way to a fresh round of duties on about $20 billion worth of U.S. imports from Canada, according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office.
The new import taxes hit hockey sticks, some building materials, liquors and certain kinds of clothing, broadening the damage beyond one sector and into everyday products. Carney said Canada would match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect workers and businesses, making clear that Ottawa was preparing to answer the latest move with its own.
What made the collapse stand out was how close the sides had sounded just one day earlier. Dominic LeBlanc spent several hours at Jamieson Greer’s office on Thursday and told reporters the two sides were very close to a deal, then Canadian negotiators met again with their U.S. counterparts on Friday and kept talking past 10:30 p.m. E.T. That sequence made the late-night break feel less like a reset than a deal that fell apart in sight of the finish line.
The two governments now disagree over why that happened. Carney said the last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic and called into question the reliability of any deal. Greer responded that Canada declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier in the week, and said the United States had offered Canada the best treatment of any major exporter to its market. He also said new demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada had upended the balance reached in the past days.
That dispute leaves the immediate fallout in place and the larger question unresolved: whether the collapse was the result of a final-minute U.S. shift, a Canadian refusal to sign, or a breakdown both sides helped produce. Carney said from the beginning that America had changed and that Canada would not return to its old relationship, a line that fits the moment better than any claim of a quick fix. For now, the tariffs are live, the negotiators are back in Ottawa and Canada is preparing to answer dollar for dollar.
