Stuart Trew, a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, argues that Canada’s walkout from trade talks with Washington was the right call — and a rare opening for the left. PM Mark Carney wanted a deal, but the deal on offer would have been terrible for Canadian workers.
What made the deal impossible to accept:
- A 15 percent US tariff on finished vehicles imported from Canada (effective 7–9 percent after deducting US parts) — a permanent incentive to close factories
- Steel and aluminum tariffs cut only to 25 percent from 50 percent; lumber lowered by just 10 percent
- Further concessions on digital and cultural policy, echoing the “reciprocal” deals other countries have signed
- Unifor, which represents Canadian autoworkers, and the premiers of Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and Manitoba all pushed back
Public opinion backs the line: a poll from August 23 shows 76 percent support for ending negotiations, with nearly two-thirds of respondents saying Canada will emerge stronger in the long run. Even Pierre Poilievre and Conrad Black are urging Carney to hold the line — while business groups and right-wing think tanks push a “grand bargain” of minerals, energy, and military procurement.
The key point: the interests of labor and capital are not the same. Carney is a banker who spent a wasted year appeasing Trump, and he remains hostile to Indigenous, labor, and environmental criticism. But economic sovereignty, whatever its limits, is the precondition for a democratic economic program — and the collapse of the talks has put democratic industrial strategy back on the table, including calls to tax energy exports to the US.