A trade deal between the US and Canada is being finalized after a tentative agreement was reached on August 18, just hours before the midnight deadline. But with so many moving parts to this arrangement, we’ll undoubtedly discover that, among Canadians, there will be few winners and a whole lot of losers.When Prime Minister Mark Carney abandoned his promise to strike a deal with Trump, blowing past his self-imposed 2025 deadlines of June 17 and then July 21, he revealed how little control he had over negotiations. Trump, on the other hand, set the deadline of August 19, and it will be Trump who ultimately determines what the deal entails.Whatever is revealed in the coming days about this deal — assuming it’s finalized — is not going to impress most Canadians. Just look at the events leading up to it.The whole negotiation process has been like a terribly run concession stand, one where Carney gave away Canadian concessions to the US but received nothing in exchange.I’m confident that any finalized deal will confirm this evaluation, because the Carney government has demonstrated no reason to expect otherwise. My lack of optimism could be the result of a clever communications strategy Carney’s using, one to lower expectations and make a crappy deal seem acceptable. But I’m not sure clever communications will be enough to save Carney’s skin if the deal is as bad as I think it is. From the very start, Carney hasn’t been an effective negotiator. He’s only talked a big game. Most of his policy-making decisions during the negotiations lowered the pressure against the US..Is that why we hired a so-called expert? Someone who’s “most useful in a crisis?” I think most ordinary people are capable of the capitulation he’s demonstrated thus far. But sometimes, when it’s a “real” leader doing the grovelling, the results can be truly disastrous.Let’s consider historical parallels. Under Carney, it’s like we’re the Aztecs. Our leader has chosen to shovel gold at Hernán Cortés (aka Trump) to appease him, but he ends up destroying us anyway. It’s no secret Trump wants Canada to become the fifty-first state, and when has appeasement ever worked out well?When Canada was prepared to impose the Digital Services Tax (DST), all it took was a phone call from Trump to stop it. In June 2025, Trump threatened to end trade negotiations if the DST was imposed on American tech companies, and Carney responded by preemptively suspending it. Canada officially repealed the DST in March 2026.The most “magnanimous” concession came in September 2025, when Carney lifted a great deal of the counter-tariffs Canada used to retaliate against the US. The counter-tariffs had been driving up prices for Canadian consumers and thus would have eventually affected Carney’s popularity.The latest concession appears to be contingent on the trade agreement. In a virtual meeting with his cabinet and the Premiers on Wednesday, Mark Carney asked leaders of the provinces and territories to put US alcohol back on Canadian shelves. It’s unclear, yet, what Canada has been given in exchange for this. I won’t hold my breath waiting to find out..Despite all this, and not revealing any concrete details positive for Canada, Carney has already tweeted his approval for the deal and that his government is “securing the best terms in each of Canada’s most important strategic sectors.”Thank you, Prime Minister Moctezuma, but I don’t believe you.I’m going to go out on a limb here and say there’s very little chance that Carney achieved the best terms for Canada’s strategic sectors. The deal struck is almost certain to be temporary, if not because of Trump’s habit of frequently altering deals, then because Carney has revealed backup plans to officially align with the US Democrats in the near future.Carney’s preparation for a political shift during the US midterms was revealed during his meeting with Barack Obama during the 2026 Global Progress Action Summit in Toronto this May. Not only did Carney speak at the invite-only event, but he also met privately with Obama at the time.During the Summit, Minister of Industry Mélanie Joly discussed the state of American democracy with Democrat Pete Buttigieg, asserting that “If the US democracy is not working well, it has an impact on all democracies.” The two openly discussed diversifying trade away from the current US-Canada relationship, and how that could de-risk global trade. During his speech at the event, Carney warned that if a deepening of trade between Canada and the US in specific sectors was not possible, “we will invest heavily in new markets and products.”When you combine that fleeting loyalty with an inability to reach a trade agreement until he was ultimately forced to, the fiery words he uttered against the US in Davos, and the fact that Carney has allowed nobody outside of his most inner circle to know exactly what negotiations took place, then the writing is on the wall. This deal, whatever it is, will not secure the best terms available as Carney promised, using his typical doublespeak. It is most likely a band-aid that will aim to keep him in office long enough to outlast Trump’s bargaining power. That power might largely be taken away in November. Then, Carney might be surprised to find the real truth of the matter: US protectionism is substantially bipartisan.
