Arya News - Experts say even a last-minute breakthrough will not result in the US lifting all its tariffs against Canadian goods.
Top trade negotiators from Canada and the United States have met for the third day running in Washington, DC, as they try to finalise a trade deal before new American tariffs start on Saturday.
Friday’s negotiations are designed to head off the 50-percent import taxes US President Donald Trump has threatened against around $20bn worth of Canadian goods.
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“All indications point to the fact that a deal is imminent before the expiry of the current extension. Or, at most, there might be another extension with negotiations going into next week,” said Vina Nadjibulla, co-founder and CEO of the Centre for Strategic Statecraft, a nonpartisan policy think tank in Canada.
But while progress has been made, any deal will not mean that the US will remove all tariffs on Canada, Nadjibulla warned in an interview with Al Jazeera.
A deal could instead mark a detente in what has been 18 months of tense relations. In 2025, early in his second term, Trump imposed tariffs on key imports from Canada, prompting Ottawa to retaliate with a suite of countermeasures.
The two countries have gone back and forth ever since, with Trump periodically introducing new tariff threats.
The latest round, introduced in late July, comes as a response to what Trump calls Canada’s “discriminatory treatment of American products”. Trump has warned he will impose the new 50 percent tariff at 12:01am Eastern time (04:01 GMT) on Saturday if a deal is not reached, a deadline pushed back from Wednesday.
Dominic LeBlanc, the Canadian minister responsible for trade with the US, did not speak to reporters as he arrived for the talks.
LeBlanc met US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer for more than three hours on Thursday and said the two sides were “very close” to a deal, but added that more work was necessary.
A hard sell
Even if a deal is reached, Prime Minister Mark Carney could find it hard to sell it to Canadians and the influential premiers who lead the country’s 10 provinces and three territories, as the tariffs impact each area differently.
A poll from the research firm Leger Opinion showed on Wednesday that 56 percent of Canadians do not want Carney to make any further concessions.
Sources say an agreement is expected to cut the top-line tariff on Canadian-built vehicles to 15 percent from 25 percent and halve tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium to 25 percent. Ontario, a major steel and aluminium producer, wants the tariffs scrapped.
Carney is calling on major provinces to rescind their ban on sales of US alcohol, which is a major irritant for Washington.
“For Carney, the politics of this is really complicated because the public opinion in Canada is against anything that will look like concessions to the US, so the prime minister is in a very tough position,” Nadjibulla said.
Wab Kinew, the premier of Manitoba, said on Thursday that Trump was “very weak” and Canada should take advantage.
“I think we’ve got the upper hand; they’re back on their heels right now. They’re coming to us for a deal and so I think we should fight,” he told reporters.
Canada, though, is a tenth the size of the US and sends around 70 percent of all exports south of the border, which makes it uniquely vulnerable to punitive US trade actions.
“Politically, Canada is in need of a decent deal that [Carney] can sell at home,” said Rachel Ziemba, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a policy nonprofit. “But the economic benefits are as much to the US as Trump’s higher tariffs are adding to inflation for US consumers.”
Ziemba added that the devil will be in the details of any eventual deal. What goods are exempted from the tariffs – and to what extent – could affect the ongoing negotiations on the US-Mexico-Canada trade pact.
Currently, under that free trade agreement, the majority of Canadian exports were exempted from US tariffs.
Rallying the MAGA base
But while experts have pointed out that the US tariffs are resulting in higher prices for US consumers, the Trump administration has attempted to leverage the president’s clashes with Canada to rally his nationalist base.
On Wednesday, US Vice President JD Vance mocked Carney, saying he “comes in and puffs his chest out and says, ‘I’m going to, like, out-tough Donald Trump’.”
In a recording obtained by the Canadian Press, Vance can then be heard speaking dismissively of the tariff negotiations.
“It’s hilarious because Carney presents this as some victory for Canada when fundamentally, like, they climb down on a lot of issues,” Vance said.
Vance was speaking at a fundraiser in Southampton, New York. The recording of his comments has added fuel to the push in Canada for the Carney government to avoid concessions in the latest trade talks — and remain laser-focused on Canada’s national interest.