Carney refuses to share details of trade deal he walked away from

Canada walked away from an advanced trade deal with the United States, with Prime Minister Mark Carney suggesting it was because the Americans were attacking Quebec culture and the French language.

In response, U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer called that a “funny fake story.” 

Ezra Levant and former senior Alberta government adviser David Knight Legg broke down the collapse in negotiations on Monday’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show.

Greer, speaking in a recorded clip Ezra played, explained plainly what the actual American objection was, noting it had nothing to do with the French language. It was a Netflix content tax — a requirement that American streaming companies take a percentage of their Canadian earnings and give it to Canadian or Quebec content producers.

“We think that’s a tax,” Greer said, calling it a “discriminatory tax on American companies.” He added that he speaks French, two of his kids speak French, and one was born in Paris. “I like that they speak French,” he said. “That is not what this is about.”

Ezra’s blockessment was that Carney “weaponized everything” and “spun it almost beyond recognition” in an effort to drum up more anti-American sentiment among Canadians.

Knight Legg said the behaviour has been counterproductive from the start, and that Canada has a genuinely weak hand to play regardless of how it plays it.

Canada depends on the United States for between 75 and 80% of its exports; on the other side, the U.S. depends on Canada for roughly 15% of its export GDP.

For Canada, there are virtually no secondary markets for most of what it sends south. For the US, replacement markets for almost everything it sends to Canada exist. “The relative impact of retributive tariffs on Canadian households is really, really problematic for Canada,” he said. “The relative impact of tariffs on Canadian goods into the U.S. is very light impact on American households.”

But while Carney failed to secure a deal with Trump, other countries with far less leverage have managed to reach deals. The United Kingdom got straight to work — without any drama, pblockive-aggressive rhetoric, and certainly not installing a U.S. Democrat operative in a high-ranking government position. 

In Asia, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia all secured deals with the Trump administration. Closer to home, Mexico appears to be on the road to reaching an agreement.

“It’s stunning to me that the content of this deal is being kept from Canadians,” Knight Legg said, “that the tone that’s been taken has been pblockive-aggressive at best and often just very aggressive.”

Knight Legg also raised the transshipment issue — a practice where Chinese-dominant goods are lightly refined in Canada, labelled “Made in Canada,” and exported to the U.S.

The U.S. government published a policy paper roughly a month ago calling this one of the biggest challenges in American trade and naming Canada specifically. “I’m imagining that definitely came up at some point,” he said, noting that Canada’s deepening relationship with Beijing is being watched very closely in Washington, where Canada and China are now the only two countries that have imposed retaliatory tariffs on the US.

Knight Legg also flagged Carney’s sovereignty language — specifically his claim that the U.S. was demanding a veto over who Canada could do deals with.

Ezra noted that provision already exists in the USMCA, in a clause that actually protects Canada: if any of the three parties does a deal with a non-market economy like China, the other two can exit the agreement on six months’ notice.

“That felt like a bad faith excuse by Carney,” Ezra said, “when I was reminded that that already exists in the trade deal.”

Knight Legg closed the conversation with a concern about motive.

“I’m concerned that just like we saw two years ago, we’re in a political season where the prime minister is trying to secure a few extra seats,” he said. “And he’s willing to play hardball for the purposes of gaining support for his party.”

With uncertainty on the trade front, more than 100,000 Canadian jobs are currently at risk.

“That task has been reduced to a bunch of name-calling and political point-scoring,” he said, “in a way I find really troubling.”