Canada’s Conservatives are pressing Prime Minister Mark Carney to move faster on a trade deal with President Donald Trump, warning that U.S. tariffs are rising and the cost to Canadian businesses is growing by the day. Pierre Poilievre said Thursday that the tariffs from the United States are actually getting much worse, and that there is no more time to waste.
Poilievre told a Toronto business audience that Windsor-based companies expect to be hit by a billion dollars in losses, saying there are no more jobs Canada can afford to lose. He added that Carney is moving too slowly even after promising last year to land a bilateral trade deal that would ease Trump’s tariffs.
The pressure lands at a sensitive moment for Carney. His Liberals secured a majority government this week, after sweeping three by-elections, and he is still trying to turn campaign promises on trade into something concrete. The latest round of Canada-U.S. talks resumed last month, but no new deal has been announced.
Carney and Trump set a goal last June at the G7 in Alberta to reach a new trade and security agreement by July 25, but that deadline has passed without a deal. Ottawa now faces an even tighter clock: Canada, the United States and Mexico have until July 1 to decide whether to renew the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. If they do not renew it by then, the countries will shift into annual reviews until the pact expires in 2036.
That timetable gives Washington more leverage and leaves Carney defending a strategy built around patience. He has said he is holding out for the best deal for Canadians, and last week Dominic LeBlanc said after speaking with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that “what the Americans say to us privately is often consistent with what they say publicly.”
Poilievre is trying to turn that delay into a political liability. He said Carney is wrong to suggest Canada can accept a permanent rupture with its biggest customer and closest neighbor in favor of a strategic partnership with Beijing. He also noted that the Conservatives’ caucus has lost four lawmakers to Carney’s side in the past five months, a sign of how much the political ground has shifted even as the trade fight deepens.
Another deadline is closing in fast. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has said he must report to Congress on June 1 about the administration’s plans for the USMCA, and he has repeatedly said Canada is trailing Mexico in the trade talks. With July 1 coming up and Carney still without the deal he promised, the question is no longer whether the pressure is real. It is whether Ottawa can get ahead of it before the next deadline does the damage for him.
