I think Canada needs to understand that the CUSMA negotiations are likely doomed.
Trump no longer has the mental capacity to handle "the art of the deal" - as Iran and the rest of the world are now finding out.
And Trump will always blame his victims, as his erratic meltdowns tank any agreements or understandings that anyone might have thought he might agree to.
So I think we're stuck with the existing CUSMA agreement, plus those additional tariffs not turfed by SCOTUS (35% on steel and aluminum, 25% on autos and furniture, plus 10% more on energy/potash, lumber and steel.)
As I said in a comment on my previous post, I fully expect Trump will announce he is "ending" CUSMA, even though it will actually stay in effect until 2036.
But such an announcement will threaten to destabilize long-term corporate investment in Canadian business, and that's going to be a problem -- I think Carney's Advisory Committee is actually intended to help the government maintain investor confidence in Canada.
On Wednesday,
Radio-Canada broke a major story about the upcoming CUSMA negotiations. Reporters
Laurence Martin, Fannie Olivier and Daniel Thibeault reported that the US wants an "entry fee" bribe to start talks:
..."[U.S. President Donald] Trump wants us to make a lot of concessions before we sit down at the table," Charest told Radio-Canada. "Meanwhile, he wouldn’t make any."
On the U.S. side, there are suggestions that Canada should try to get Trump’s attention by making an immediate concession, especially since the president is juggling several major issues right now.
However, Canadian sources said they have twice offered concessions to the U.S. administration without receiving anything in return.
...Last spring, Ottawa dropped a significant portion of the reciprocal counter-tariffs it had put forward as a retaliatory measure against the tariffs on steel and aluminum imposed by Washington.
At the end of June, Canada also scrapped the digital services tax, which would have imposed a three per cent levy on the Canadian revenues of digital giants such as Amazon, Apple and Meta.
"The repeal of the digital services tax will significantly advance negotiations on a new economic and security partnership with the United States," Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said at the time.
More than nine months later however, negotiations do not appear to have made any progress...
But nine months ago was way back in 2025 -- in the good old days when Trump was talking all the time about all the trade deals he wanted to make, and when the world still believed that maybe Trump could "be reasonable".
Now, we all understand that just ain't gonna happen.
