Understanding Trade Negotiations Between the U.S. and Canada After Accusations of a ‘Blatant Attack’ Rocked Relations

TIME

President Donald Trump said Friday that he’s suspending trade talks with Canada over its plans to continue with its tax on technology firms, which he called “a direct and blatant attack on our country.”

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00:00Canada and the U.S. are in trade talks, and as recently as earlier this month at the G7

00:05summit in Canada, Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, set a 30-day deadline to reach a deal,

00:11to put pressure to get a deal done so that Canada would avoid tariffs in trade between the two large

00:17trading partners. There was a digital tax against big tech companies set to be implemented in a

00:25couple of days in Canada on Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. That was supposed to go in effect

00:32in a couple of days on June 30th. Trump, I guess, got wind of this or is putting pressure in the

00:38trade talks to get that removed, so he posted on his social media that he's ended all trade talks

00:46with Canada. So Canada put a charge on some of our companies, and Canada's been a very difficult

00:52country to deal with over the years. You know, we hear Canada, we have a great relationship with

00:58the people of Canada, but it's been very difficult, and they put a charge, and they were a little bit

01:03early, we found out about it, so. And we have all the cards. We have every single one. We don't want

01:09to do anything bad, but they have, economically, we have such power over Canada. I'd rather not use it,

01:17but they did something with our tech companies today, trying to copy Europe. You know, they copied

01:22Europe. It's not going to work out well for Europe either, and it's not going to work out well for Canada.

01:27Carney, in response, said this is part of the negotiation, so, and Trump just said in the Oval

01:32Office that he expects that Canada will remove the digital services tax on American big tech companies,

01:39and we'll see if Canada does that. It's quite possible that they will, as part of a larger

01:43re-negotiation of trade talks in an effort to get rid of tariffs on Canadian goods.

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