U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the responsibility for starting trade negotiations lies with Canada, adding that the trade war between the two North American neighbors is Canada’s problem, not the United States’s.
“It’s more their emergency than ours,” Greer told Politico on Tuesday. “There are no negotiations happening on trade right now.”
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Greer projected a nonchalant stance as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney prepares to implement retaliatory tariffs targeting the U.S. In his interview with the outlet on Tuesday, over 10 days since the collapse of the Canada-U.S. trade deal, Greer said, “It’s not clear Canada wants a deal,” and that if the U.S.’s northern neighbor decides “prohibiting and banning American goods and services is appropriate,” then the U.S. “should consider” that response as well with Canada.
Carney announced that Canada would match the U.S.’s 50% tariffs on about $20 billion of Canadian goods at a “dollar-for-dollar” rate. The retaliatory tariffs will take effect on Sept. 8, leaving one week from Tuesday for the two countries to seal a deal before the trade war escalates to the next level.
Although Carney said his country decided upon the retaliatory tariffs “reluctantly” and claimed the U.S. negotiators were responsible for the breakdown in negotiations, Greer has pushed back on this narrative. The U.S. trade representative said on the day the deal collapsed that Canada “declined to finalize” the agreed-upon deal. Greer said Tuesday that Canada’s push for lower rates on heavy trucks and other eleventh-hour asks tanked the deal, refusing to name conditions that would bring the U.S. back to the negotiating table.
“I would not say there are conditions,” Greer said. “It just seems to me that a deal was available, and they didn’t want that. Where is the United States supposed to go from there, right? There’s not a better deal out there available for the Canadians.”
In a press conference the Saturday after the trade talks fell through, Carney alleged U.S. negotiators made “last-minute changes” including attempting to block medium- and heavy-duty trucks from being protected from tariffs, bar Canada’s ability to forge trade deals with other nations, and restrict protections for Canadian language and culture.
After Carney had announced the retaliatory tariffs, Greer told Fox News that the U.S. is “moving forward with measures that respond to Canadian retaliation.”
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE IMPENDING US-CANADA TRADE ‘WAR’
Since the trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada have escalated, President Donald Trump has also thrown into the fold an executive order changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” As part of his reasoning for the order, Trump said from the Oval Office, “Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade.”
Carney has clapped back at the U.S. name change, saying, “Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always.”
