Canada's trade minister Dominic LeBlanc said on Monday that Canada will not rush into a trade deal with the United States, confirming that Ottawa expects no agreement before the November 3 American midterm elections and will not sign anything it judges to be against Canada's interests. "We have continued to remain engaged with the United States," LeBlanc said in a television interview. "But we're not going to rush into some particular circumstance and agree to something that we don't think is in Canada's sovereign interest or economic interest." It was a message delivered with a shrug — and it landed while the White House was telling American voters the exact opposite: that a deal with Canada is nearly done and Canada is ready to give Washington anything it wants.
The reporting behind LeBlanc's comments is blunt. Canadian officials have told industry groups in recent weeks that no agreement is anticipated before the November 3 elections, and that despite ongoing contact between officials there is no substantial engagement between the two sides. The reason is not hard to see: the White House is fully focused on the midterm campaign, with President Donald Trump spending much of his time at rallies as polls suggest his Republican Party could lose the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate. A source familiar with the discussions put the state of play plainly: there are "substantive conversations, but there are still key elements that remain unresolved," and "we are not on the verge of an agreement just yet."
Ottawa's public line has not moved all week. On Sunday, a spokesperson for LeBlanc's office said Canada "remains in constructive dialogue with our U.S. counterparts on a range of priorities" and stands ready to work "towards a more mutually beneficial trading relationship that respects Canada's interests." On Friday, responding to Washington's latest tariff changes, LeBlanc said that "while we assess these latest steps, Canada stands ready to work constructively and in good faith." Prime Minister Mark Carney suggested on Monday that Washington was moving closer to Canada's position. Canada's chief trade negotiator, Janice Charette, described the situation at a Toronto forum last week in four words: "Pens are down, and the doors are open." The conversations, she said, are about whether the two sides can get back to a negotiating table at all — "we don't know exactly when that's going to happen."
From Washington, the story sounds completely different. At a campaign rally in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday, Trump told the crowd: "We'll have that settled pretty soon. They're willing to give us anything at this moment." He repeated his long-standing charge that Canada "has been ripping off" the United States and said he had no choice but to impose tariffs. Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, said on television that negotiations had "picked up," that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had been talking to his Canadian counterparts all week, and that "it's very close to finally having a deal." U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, for his part, has denied that Canada is being singled out, saying the tariffs are "not focused on any one country."
This is where the eye-rolling comes in — and it is earned. Two governments are describing two different realities to two different audiences, eight days before an American election. Washington is selling momentum, because momentum helps Senate candidates in northern states; even David Axelrod, a former chief strategist to President Barack Obama, noted on Monday that an eleventh-hour deal with Canada is an option Trump might still pursue to help those candidates. Ottawa, meanwhile, is messaging calm — no rush, no panic, nothing signed that Canada does not like — while its own sources caution that it suits the Americans to spin the idea that a deal is close. Brian Clow, a former deputy chief of staff to former prime minister Justin Trudeau, said the optimism in some circles had rested on the trade war's unpopularity with American voters. "But that window appears to be entirely closed," he said. Polls show Trump's dispute with Canada is deeply unpopular among American voters in both major parties — which is exactly why the messaging war matters more right now than the negotiating table nobody is sitting at.
The road to this stalemate runs through a summer collapse. Formal negotiations between the two countries broke down in August, when Carney suspended the talks, recalled Canada's team to Ottawa and said the United States had "asked too much and offered too little." Washington imposed 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods in August, and Canada answered with matching counter-tariffs from September 8. In an August post on his Truth Social platform, Trump threatened to raise tariffs on cars, trucks, auto parts and steel to 50 percent as of January 1, 2027; LeBlanc said Washington has taken no official step on that threat yet, but called it "obviously of concern." On Friday, Trump moved in both directions at once — lifting some of the 50 percent tariffs at the end of the month, a step Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine announced for products including plywood, bleached paper, cartons and specialized agricultural machinery, while adding tariffs to dozens of other Canadian products, among them carpets, air conditioners and garbage and sewage goods. Trump also announced on Thursday that Canadian aircraft maker Bombardier will invest $270 million in the United States, after his administration had threatened a 50 percent tariff on the company's jets.
Behind the bilateral fight sits the bigger frame: the North American trade pact itself. The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement — USMCA in the United States, CUSMA in Canada — remains in force, and at the pact's scheduled joint review on July 1, 2026, Greer announced that Washington would not renew it in its existing form. That did not cancel the deal: it stays in place until 2036, but now under rolling annual reviews, with Washington already preparing further review steps for 2027. LeBlanc has insisted all along that the review is about renewal, not renegotiation — "It's not 2016 again," as he put it earlier this year — and that Canada is ready to move when Washington is. What is being fought over is not small: steel, aluminum, autos and lumber are all under tariff pressure, the United States wants greater access to Canada's protected dairy market, and LeBlanc has said Canada's supply management system is not on the table. A three-country trading relationship worth some $2 trillion runs on the rules now in question.
For ordinary citizens on both sides of the border, this is not an abstract argument between ministers — it arrives in pay packets and prices. Tariffs on steel, aluminum and auto parts raise the cost of cars, appliances and building materials for American shoppers, and Canada's matching counter-tariffs do the same in reverse for Canadian households. Autoworkers and steelworkers in Ontario and in the American Midwest build the same vehicles on the same supply lines, and their jobs rise and fall together; Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Monday that a fair deal for steelworkers, autoworkers and manufacturing workers would have him put American booze back on Ontario liquor-store shelves "in a heartbeat" — the province's ban on U.S. alcohol is one small, visible piece of the fight in everyday life. In Maine, the tariff pain was sharp enough that a Republican senator asked the White House for relief for her state's businesses and got some on Friday. And uncertainty itself carries a price: a KPMG survey this summer found 42 percent of Canadian manufacturers had shifted, or planned to shift, production to the United States, and 57 percent had paused or cut capital spending — factories not built and shifts not hired while two governments argue. A settled, predictable pact is what lets businesses on both sides invest and hire with confidence; every month of drift is a month that confidence is spent.
So the honest picture on Monday is this: no deal before the midterms, no negotiating table in session, no announced terms and no date — despite what rally crowds in Michigan were told. What happens next depends first on November 3, and after that on whether Washington decides that the offer it is willing to make is one Ottawa can sign. LeBlanc's message was that Canada can wait. Trump's message was that Canada cannot wait to give in. Both cannot be true, and by next week, one of them will have to give.
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