Carney says U.S. is asking less and offering more in trade talks
Prime Minister Mark Carney said on November 3, 2026 that trade negotiations with the United States are making progress, but that "it's not over yet." He spoke to reporters at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda.
Carney described the state of the talks this way: "They're asking less and they're offering more, but we're not quite there." He also said more intense negotiations with the U.S. have started and are underway, according to CityNews Halifax.
The same day, U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States was close to making a trade deal with Canada, Reuters reported. Earlier, on November 1, Carney said he had a good conversation with Trump about the future of trade between the two countries, Reuters reported.
Carney said U.S. negotiators have backed off two positions. One treated French-protection laws, the rules that protect the French language in Canada, as trade barriers. The other would have restricted Ottawa's ability to sign trade deals with other countries.
He named three red lines, meaning points Canada will not give up in the talks. They are the French language, Canadian culture, and Canada's freedom to pursue free trade agreements with other nations.
Talks were halted this summer. On August 21, 2026, Carney suspended the negotiations and directed Canada's negotiators to return to Ottawa. Canada walked away deadlocked over matters including automobile trade. The talks are expected to pick up where they left off in August.
In remarks the next day, Carney said the U.S. offer was a "bad deal" that "asked too much and offered too little." He said the U.S. proposals as they stood in August would have curtailed Canadian sovereignty and eroded or destroyed major Canadian industries, according to his remarks on August 22.
He said the U.S. had refused to extend tariff relief, meaning an exemption from the taxes on imported goods, to medium- and heavy-duty trucks, the large commercial vehicles. That, he said, would have affected whether General Motors and Ford plants in Ontario could stay viable.
Carney also said the U.S. was pushing for changes to the discoverability of French-language content on online streaming services, meaning how easily viewers can find that content.
