Canada Deal Collapse Reveals Trump’s Unreasonable, Billionaire-Friendly Trade Agenda
By Melinda St. Louis, Director at Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
Reports indicate that the recent Canada-U.S. trade negotiations were scuttled due to last-minute outrageous demands made by the Trump administration, which unsurprisingly included the wishlist of the biggest U.S. corporations — not the policies needed to support working people.
This administration has pushed the same imperialist and neo-colonialist agenda in all of its “agreements on reciprocal trade” (ARTs) signed over the past year. Some of Trump’s reported red lines included U.S. veto power over Canada’s sovereign right to sign trade agreements with third countries and a requirement for Canada to impose the same tariffs as the U.S. on other countries.
The attacks on Canada’s sovereignty don’t end there. Alongside other overreaching demands, the Trump administration apparently even wanted Quebec to repeal its laws requiring consumer products to be labelled in French, and that seek to promote French content on online streaming services. Keep in mind that French is spoken by the majority of the population of the province.
These demands are on top of the perpetual call for the deregulation of critical sectors of Canada’s economy.
Canadian negotiators rightly bristled at U.S. demands that they viewed as an infringement on their sovereignty. The sheer audacity of the Trump administration’s demands made headlines, but these are precisely the terms that Trump has already forced other, less powerful countries to agree to.
The U.S.-Argentina ART forced concessions to undermine Argentina’s intellectual property rules that limit Big Pharma’s monopoly power, setting the stage to raise drug prices for patients. El Salvador and Guatemala’s deals restrain them from implementing digital competition, platform accountability, or online safety regulations, among other handouts to Big Tech. Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, is required to eliminate certain halal requirements for food imports. Many of these ARTs also contain provisions that force signatories to align their domestic policies with U.S export controls and tariffs while also allowing the U.S. a veto over trade deals signed with third parties. There are dozens and dozens of similar examples from Trump’s ARTs, and the common thread is the attempt to line the pockets of American CEOs at the expense of consumers and workers everywhere.
We commend, as do several North American labor unions and consumer groups, Canada’s decision to walk away from such outrageous terms. Giving in to Trump’s bullying does not create certainty, as Canada and the European Union learned, as Trump has continued to move the goalposts and threaten more tariffs after ostensibly coming to a deal before.
Trump should pay close attention to the impact of this bullying of U.S. allies— retaliatory tariffs and pushing our allies to move closer to other countries. Canada has the means and resources to resist these attacks, and doing so has united the country. Canada’s resistance demonstrates that countries can push back against Trump’s bullying and sets an example others may be well-advised to follow.