The United States Department Of Justice Antitrust Division was reported to have been told earlier this week to pause all work with the Canadian government, putting a quiet but important channel of cross-border cooperation on hold just as the trade dispute between the two countries hardened.
The timing mattered because the tension was already showing up in tariffs and in public statements from both capitals. Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada would match Washington's new tariffs dollar for dollar in order to protect Canadian workers, farmers, families, and businesses, after the Trump administration's new 50% tariffs on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods took effect last month.
In the reported directive, Lynda Marshall ordered officials on Wednesday to halt all cooperation on cases and engagement on policy issues with Canadian authorities. By Friday, section chiefs in the antitrust division were told to provide lists of the areas where they were working with Canada by the end of the day. That is the detail that gave the report its weight: it suggested a broad accounting of how much of the division's day-to-day work touched Canadian counterparts, not just a single case.
The Justice Department pushed back hard. It said the alleged direction was never given to anyone and that the division was only asked to temporarily hold off on a scheduled meeting on a specific investigation until the DOJ's antitrust team had more time to prepare. That response narrows the report without fully erasing the question it raised: whether any actual pause spread beyond that one meeting and, if so, how far it went.
The broader backdrop is clear enough. The trade dispute between the United States and Canada intensified after President Donald Trump's return to the White House in January 2025, and Canada said it would impose retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. beginning Sept. 8. Against that backdrop, even a brief interruption in antitrust cooperation would show how quickly trade friction can spill into regulatory work that usually happens out of public view.
What remains unanswered is not whether the two governments are in a fight. They are. It is whether Washington's antitrust arm actually stepped away from Canadian work, or whether the reported order was clipped back to a single meeting before it could become policy.
