The Trump administration’s combative approach to Canada appears to be softening slightly, just days before the midterm elections in the U.S., where tariff-fueled inflation is a primary concern for voters.
Trade talks with Washington have seen a “slight intensification” in recent days, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Monday.
President Donald Trump, likewise, seemed to back off some of his angrier rhetoric over the weekend, when he told reporters a potential trade deal with Canada would be “settled pretty soon.”
“They’re willing to give us anything at this moment,” Trump added.
Carney, however, said the opposite. “To the extent any progress has been made, it’s because the U.S. is coming closer to our position,” he told reporters in Ottawa.
Ever since advanced trade talks collapsed in August, the Trump administration has slapped 50% tariffs on hundreds of categories of Canadian imports. Ottawa has responded in kind.
But the two leaders’ most recent statements came after the United States unilaterally announced that it would lift some tariffs on Canada late last week and replace them with others.
The move to alter tariffs came at the urging of Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is facing a tight re-election battle in Maine.
Control of the U.S. Senate will be decided Tuesday by a handful of very close races, several of them in Canadian border states where polls show Trump’s tariffs are broadly unpopular.
In Alaska, candidates across the political spectrum have called out Trump’s trade war with Canada as a drag on consumers.
The same is true in Michigan, where the Republican nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers, has called for an end to the trade war with Canada.
The economies in all three of these states are deeply intertwined with their Canadian neighbors.
In Washington, a White House official who is not typically involved in trade talks suggested over the weekend that a trade agreement was imminent.
The U.S. and Canada are “very close to finally having a deal,” said Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, on Fox News.
But neither the American nor the Canadian statements since then appeared to support such a sunny reading of the situation.
The Commerce Department, which oversees trade, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday from NBC News.
“Canada remains in constructive dialogue with our U.S. counterparts on a range of priorities,” said a spokesperson for the minister responsible for trade with the United States.
Meanwhile, Carney said he didn’t know whether the motivations of American officials hoping to revive talks were different this time.
“We have very clear bottom lines, red lines, which meant that we were not willing to sign what was offered in August,” he said Monday.