Canada to curb reliance on US despite Trump team’s crushing midterm loss, minister says

Canada’s push to reduce economic dependence on the US will not change after President Donald Trump’s Republican Party suffered a crushing midterm election defeat, an official said on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has maintained that trade with the US, a cornerstone of the Canadian economy, will not return to a pre-Trump normal and that his country must urgently diversify its trading relationships.

US Democratic Party leaders have been critical of Trump’s trade war with Canada and called for the reversal of sweeping tariffs that have affected businesses on both sides of the border.

But the Canadian minister responsible for US-Canada trade, Dominic LeBlanc, stressed Wednesday that Ottawa’s focus on repositioning the economy “hasn’t changed”.

“We obviously took note of the election results in the United States,” he told reporters, underscoring that trade negotiations will still be held with Trump’s White House, not an incoming Democratic-controlled Congress.

Carney’s government is committed to “diversifying our trading relationships”, LeBlanc said.

“That was our focus yesterday. That is actually our focus today and will be the focus tomorrow in the budget” that is set to be released, LeBlanc said.

Trump’s tariffs have hit the Canadian economy hard, while his repeated remarks that Canada could become the 51st US state have led to boycotts of American products.

Carney walked away from trade talks in August, accusing Washington of seeking to impose terms that infringed on Canadian sovereignty, but he has sounded a more optimistic note in recent days.

“We’ve made progress, but we haven’t finished,” he told reporters in Antigua and Barbuda on Tuesday, on the sidelines of a Commonwealth summit.

Trump’s team had backed away from certain Canadian “red lines”, Carney added, without providing specifics.

Trump said late last month that he expected a new trade agreement with Canada to be reached “pretty soon”, but previous assurances from the president about an impending deal have not materialised.