Here's the transcript from Mark Carney's Saturday morning Aug 22 news conference:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-full-remarks-us-trade-talks-suspended-9.7317033
There's a lot of details in it. I'll copy/paste what I think are the highlights:
For over a year, Canada has worked intensively and in good faith with the United States to negotiate a new comprehensive trade deal.
We have been under no illusions. [...] We recognized that sometimes its signature was written in pencil.
Over the past year, the U.S. has imposed a series of tariffs that violate its commitments under our agreement with them and Mexico, so-called CUSMA. The United States has continually changed their rationale for these actions, from fentanyl to taxes on U.S. tech giants, to certification of U.S. aircraft, to the sharing of tolls of a bridge that Canada built and paid for, to our dairy policy, to provincial decisions to not sell American alcohol during a trade war, to a television advertisement that quoted Ronald Reagan, to smoke from wildfires while they threatened our communities.
Canada is also the largest customer for 26 U.S. states, and a top three customer for 45 U.S. states. Last year, Americans sold almost $600 billion in goods and services to Canadians - that's more than $1.6 billion every single day. Canadian exports to the U.S. lower the costs for American families. In contrast, tariffs are taxes, taxes which are ultimately paid by US consumers.
And while we believed, earlier this week, that we were moving towards a mutually beneficial agreement, in recent days, the United States proposed new terms that were uneconomic, unfair, and undermined the net benefits to Canada, and called into question the reliability of any deal. In short, they asked too much and they offered too little.
Building at home and diversifying trade abroad is not our Plan B. It has been our Plan A from the start. Canada will continue to pursue this path to build Canada Strong, because it's right and it's working.
Canada is now the best-connected economy in the world. Over the last year we have signed more than 20 trade and security deals across five continents. We completed our most recent deal, with the UAE, in a record 47 days. Canadian businesses now enjoy tariff-free access to 1.5 billion consumers. Over the next six months, we will double that number through new trade deals from ASEAN, to India.
Last spring, I warned that America is trying to break us so they can own us. And I promised that that will never, ever happen. We are keeping that promise. Canada is becoming stronger and less dependent on America. We are already giving ourselves more than they can take away. And we are just getting started.
