merce Secretary Howard Lutnick last week. Photo by Blair Gable/Postmedia
Canada-United States Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said the government wants to resolve trade frictions with the Trump administration as part of a comprehensive agreement, rather than through “one-off” deals.
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LeBlanc said the irritants U.S. officials raise privately are the same ones they’ve outlined publicly. A recent report by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer’s office flagged Canada’s supply-managed dairy system, regulations affecting major U.S. technology firms and other long-standing trade concerns.
“If we’re going to resolve some of these issues that Ambassador Greer referred to, Canada is ready and willing to do that work,” LeBlanc told a parliamentary committee Thursday.
But he said any progress must come as part of a “larger agreement” that would ease pressure on tariff-affected sectors of Canada’s economy and provide greater certainty around the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement review process.
The minister’s comments shine a light on the strategic considerations of the U.S., Canada and Mexico in the trade discussions, which have been partly shaped by the Trump administration’s behaviour toward its trading partners.
U.S. officials have pushed Canada for specific concessions and sometimes received them — without giving Canada anything in return. Last June, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government dropped a digital services tax at the Trump administration’s request. But weeks later, President Donald Trump raised the tariff rate on Canadian goods anyway. Carney then dropped many of Ottawa’s retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. as the two sides were talking. But Trump broke off those discussions the following month.
Canada presses for wider trade agreement in talks with U.S. | Financial Post