Canada is ready to begin early talks on reviewing the North American free trade pact if the Trump administration wants to begin that process, Canadian Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc said.
The government in Ottawa would prefer to move quickly to a broader negotiation that sorts out many points of trade friction, rather than talking “sector by sector, week by week,” LeBlanc said in an interview with Bloomberg News. The United States-Mexico-Canada agreement, which has been in place since 2020, is already scheduled for a joint review in 2026.
“If the American administration indicated to us that they wanted to advance that date and have those conversations, we would be ready,” LeBlanc said. There are, he said, “a lot of common interests between the three of us.”
And the finance minister said Canada is prepared to work with the White House hash out further measures to prevent China from “dumping into the North American market.” Canada put tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, steel and aluminum last year, largely to align with US trade policy. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday her country would review tariffs on Chinese shipments.
The minister's comments came at the end of an unprecedented week of turbulence in trade relations across the North American trade bloc. The US imposed 25% tariffs on most goods it imports from Canada and Mexico — prompting swift retaliation from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government, which put its own tariffs on about C$30 billion ($20.9 billion) of US-made goods.
Trump offered a brief reprieve on Thursday, delaying US tariffs for goods covered under the USMCA until April 2. But tensions remain high and Trudeau said plainly this week that he believes Trump's ultimate goal is to force economic hardship in Canada and annex the country.
Trump then fanned the flames on Friday, saying that “Canada has been ripping us off for years on tariffs for lumber and for dairy products” and threatening another round of tariffs.
Trudeau is about to leave office and his successor will be chosen by members of the governing Liberal Party on Sunday.
LeBlanc — who has endorsed former central banker Mark Carney in the Liberal contest — said he hadn't had a “substantive conversation” yet on Friday with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick or other officials about Trump's comments on lumber and dairy.
Overall, “my conversations with Secretary Lutnick have been constructive, have frankly been cordial. They're businesslike,” LeBlanc said.
There's another trade-war deadline looming next week, as Trump has said the US will put 25% levies on foreign steel and aluminum on national security grounds. LeBlanc said he's “not yet that pessimistic that they're going to be imposed. My discussions with Secretary Lutnick are that there's room to have conversations over the next few days.”
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