Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made no attempt to sugarcoat the situation Thursday. U.S. President Donald Trump has never been a fan of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, and everyone around the negotiating table knows it.
“It’s no secret the president in recent years has not been the biggest fan of CUSMA or other trade deals,” Carney told reporters in Vancouver, where he joined British Columbia Premier David Eby for an infrastructure announcement.
The candid admission came a day after Trump publicly floated his preference to see the three-country trade pact simply expire rather than get extended or enter a review process. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, the president said he would rather watch CUSMA “terminate” than see it renewed though he acknowledged he might end up signing a renewal anyway. “I prefer that,” Trump said of letting the deal lapse, adding that the U.S. would “do better as a country when we don’t have an agreement.”
July 1 is the trigger date the point at which all three signatories must formally enter discussions about the agreement’s next phase, whether that’s a 16-year extension, a decade of annual reviews, or something else entirely.
Despite the noise from Washington, Carney was careful to draw a line between rhetoric and reality. He pointed to recent remarks from U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who has said “the underlying structure of CUSMA” remains solid and will hold through the negotiation period. Carney also reminded reporters that any country wishing to exit the agreement faces a mandatory six-month notice period meaning an abrupt collapse isn’t on the immediate horizon.
The prime minister confirmed he had spoken directly with Trump on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France this week, touching on “some of the commercial aspects” of CUSMA alongside a broader range of bilateral issues. Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and chief trade negotiator Janice Charette also held separate talks with Greer at the summit, building on discussions that began in Washington earlier this month. According to LeBlanc, both sides agreed to stay in close contact going forward.
One of the most pressing flashpoints in the current trade friction is Canada’s forestry sector, which is being hammered by steep American tariffs and anti-dumping duties. Carney said the federal government is actively working with British Columbia on a comprehensive forest products strategy one that would not only push for the removal or reduction of U.S. tariffs but also restructure domestic supply chains to prioritize Canadian lumber in Canadian homebuilding projects.
Premier Eby did not hold back his frustration with the current state of affairs. He pointed out that the United States has actually been increasing its lumber imports from Russia a move that, in his view, defies economic logic when high-quality Canadian wood sits available across the border.
“To see the Americans increasing their imports of lumber from Russia instead of from British Columbia and Canada doesn’t make any sense to us at all,” Eby said. He expressed hope that the Trump administration would engage seriously with Canadian officials on the issue, calling the potential for a negotiated resolution a genuine “win-win” for both countries.
A new federal technical advisory group has also been set up to identify and grow non-U.S. markets for Canadian forestry exports part of a broader effort to reduce Canada’s exposure to American trade unpredictability.
The episode underscores the delicate tightrope Canada is walking as it heads into a formal renegotiation with a partner that has made no secret of its disdain for multilateral trade commitments. The question now isn’t whether Trump likes CUSMA he has made his feelings plain. The question is whether the architecture of the deal, and the economic interdependencies it reflects, will prove stronger than the president’s preferences.
For Carney, the answer, for now, appears to be yes. “There are specific things that we can work together on,” he said a line that sounded less like optimism and more like a blueprint.
