Trump Tariffs: Canada-US Trade Deal Progress, Carney Says
The latest trump tariffs news from Asia carries a more hopeful tone than Canada has heard in months. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Saturday that he had held lengthy, substantive talks with President Donald Trump and that the two countries are making progress towards a trade deal, although they have yet to reach an agreement.
Carney is in the Philippines for a state visit and meetings with Southeast Asian leaders, and his comments came at the start of a week of high-stakes diplomacy across the region. He arrived in Manila early on Saturday, and his schedule includes a meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and the ASEAN summit, where Trump is due to join the final talks on Tuesday.
Carney Reports Progress After Lengthy Talks in Manila
Carney’s statement was brief, but it carried weight. Speaking to reporters in Manila on Saturday, November 14, the prime minister said his talks with Trump had been lengthy and substantive, and that the two sides are making progress towards a trade deal. He did not claim an agreement was close, and he set out no timetable.
The prime minister arrived in Manila at 6:15 a.m. on Saturday, and his first engagement was a meeting with President Marcos at 10 a.m. He is attending the ASEAN summit as a guest of the chair, at a moment when trade disruption has become the region’s shared problem. Trump is also expected in Manila for an ASEAN-U.S. engagement on November 17, so the two leaders will be in the same city again within days.
Carney also used his appearance in Manila to make a separate point about European security. He said Canada would not walk away from NATO and that the security architecture for a free Europe would be determined by a free Europe and NATO, not by Russia.
Tariff News: How the Canada-US Dispute Reached This Point
The tariff news that has dominated relations between the two countries all year began with a series of American duties on Canadian goods. Trump imposed tariffs of up to 50 percent on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian products, and Ottawa answered with retaliatory measures. The duties hit the sectors where the two economies are most closely tied together, above all steel, aluminum, automobiles, energy and forestry, and they quickly became a burden on manufacturers, exporters and consumers on both sides of the border.
The talks to settle the dispute broke down in August, when Canada suspended formal negotiations after several days of intensive discussions failed to produce an acceptable agreement. The two sides had been working to finalise a deal before a new round of American tariffs was imposed on nearly 28 billion dollars’ worth of Canadian goods, but the effort fell apart at the last hour. Carney said some of the American demands threatened Canadian sovereignty and its cultural protections, and Ottawa concluded that no deal was better than a bad one.
The breakdown left the dispute to drag on through the autumn. Reuters reported in October that the two countries were negotiating possible relief from duties of up to 50 percent on Canadian steel and 25 percent on automobiles, a sign that the outlines of a compromise were at least being discussed. The human cost has been visible in factory towns across Ontario and Quebec: Stellantis, one of North America’s largest carmakers, moved planned production of the Jeep Compass to Illinois and put its Brampton, Ontario, plant up for sale, a decision Carney publicly criticised.
Trump Administration Demands and Canada’s Red Lines
The path back to the negotiating table began in early November, when the tone from both capitals started to change. On November 1, Carney described a constructive conversation with Trump about the future of bilateral trade, saying their teams would keep working towards an arrangement to support jobs and protect Canadian sovereignty. Trump said afterwards that the two sides had developed the basic concept of an agreement, although important details remained unfinished. On November 2, Carney said they had agreed to try to wrap up a deal on tariffs within 30 days.
By November 3, Carney was able to report that more intense trade negotiations had already begun. Speaking to reporters in St. John’s, Antigua and Barbuda, where he was attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, he said the American side was now asking less and offering more. It was the clearest sign in months that Washington had shifted its position, and it suggested the talks had moved past the stalemate that ended them in August.
Crucially, Carney said some of Canada’s red lines had been taken off the table. The American demands touching on French-language content and Canadian cultural programming are no longer part of the negotiation, and Washington has also stepped back from seeking to restrict Canada’s ability to negotiate trade deals with other countries. Carney said the two sides had made progress on that question, although other important issues still needed progress. The auto sector, he indicated, is likely to remain the biggest obstacle to a final agreement.
An earlier meeting between the two leaders at the White House had ended without a concrete agreement. Canada’s trade minister, Dominic LeBlanc, described those talks as successful, positive and substantive, but gave no details on why a deal had not been reached; the discussions focused on steel, aluminum and energy. Trump characterised Canada as an economic competitor with whom the United States has a natural conflict, and said he wanted to replace Canadian-made cars and steel with domestic production. He also ruled out a completely tariff-free deal, telling reporters, “We are going to have tariffs.”
What the Tariffs Mean for Workers and Prices
The tariffs impact on prices has been one of the most sensitive parts of the dispute, because duties on steel, aluminum and cars do not stay at the border. They feed through into the cost of building houses, manufacturing vehicles and stocking shops, and they fall hardest on the workers and families in the industries caught in the middle. For Canada, the stakes are unusually high: Statistics Canada reported that 71.7 percent of Canadian merchandise exports went to the United States in 2025, down from 75.9 percent in 2024. More than seven in ten dollars of Canadian goods sold abroad still cross the American border, which is why a trade deal with Washington matters more to Ottawa than any other negotiation it is conducting.
The auto industry illustrates the problem more clearly than any other sector. Cars and parts cross the border several times before a finished vehicle rolls off the line, so a tariff applied at each crossing compounds quickly. The possible relief from duties of up to 50 percent on steel and 25 percent on automobiles that Reuters reported in October would matter enormously to the plants in Ontario that build vehicles for the American market. Until a deal is signed, those plants must plan around duties that make their products more expensive than those of their competitors.
Canada’s Asia Push: ASEAN Deals and a Meeting With Xi
While the talks with Washington continue, Carney has been pursuing a deliberate strategy to widen Canada’s economic options in Asia, and his Manila visit is a central part of that effort. Canada is pursuing two major free trade agreements at the same time: a bilateral agreement with the Philippines and a broader agreement with ASEAN itself. Formal bilateral negotiations with the Philippines were announced in October 2025, with the first round taking place in Manila in February 2026, while negotiations with ASEAN began in November 2021.
Progress on both fronts has accelerated. In September, International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu told Reuters that both sets of negotiations were more than 90 percent complete. On November 13, the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada reported expectations that the Philippines agreement could be finalised during the Manila summit, while the ASEAN negotiations could reach substantial completion.
The numbers explain why Ottawa is investing so much effort in the region. Canada-ASEAN merchandise trade reached approximately 52.5 billion Canadian dollars in 2025, an increase of 23.7 percent from 2024. The bloc of eleven nations, which admitted Timor-Leste as its newest member last year, is one of the fastest-growing economic regions in the world. Carney is also scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit later this month, and he has argued that Canada’s economic engagement with China presents a different set of security considerations from the broader United States-China relationship.
US Politics: The Midterm Backdrop
The trade talks are also unfolding against a changed political landscape in Washington. Democrats won sweeping victories in the midterm elections on November 3, in which Republicans lost their majority in Congress, and the result has raised questions about how much freedom Trump will have to strike deals in the remainder of his term. Carney has made clear that he intends to keep the negotiations focused on the White House, rather than pursuing separate approaches through individual American states or political groups, and he has said the Trump administration remains the central decision-maker on trade.
What Happens Next
The next few days will show whether Carney’s optimism is justified. The ASEAN summit opens in Manila on Sunday, November 15, and closes on Tuesday, November 17, with Trump due to attend the ASEAN-U.S. Special Summit on the final day. Both leaders will then travel on to China for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen on November 18 and 19, where another conversation between them is possible.
The 30-day target the two leaders set in early November means the talks now have a rough deadline, and the coming week will test whether the progress Carney reported in Manila can be turned into text. The auto sector remains the biggest sticking point, and the question of how much tariff relief Washington is prepared to offer on steel and automobiles will decide whether a deal is possible. For Carney, the priority is a deal that protects Canadian workers, businesses and cultural identity, and that finally lifts the tariffs that have weighed on his country’s economy all year. His message from Manila was that such a deal is now within reach.
Source: Reuters