According to Poilievre the Prime Minister promised a good deal by July 21st and to stop the tariffs. He traveled to the US and tariffs have doubled and tripled in some cases.
He met with the Chinese and they increased tariffs on canola, seafood, and pork.
He met with the Indians and they increased tariffs on peas.
We did get a sweet raise, though it's fair to say Trump has some DNA on that.
There will not be a tariff free deal. CUSMA will probably not survive.
I took a day off work to attend a conference on national security acouple weeks ago, academic interest on my part. Good blend of academics, government and business types. Among the subjects was economic security and sovereignty. Chatham house rules,so I cannot attribute or quote, but a well connected international trade type spoke about their engagement with colleagues in the U.S. The consistent message coming back from US international trade types is that, like it or not, and regardless of the economic incoherence of it, the Trump administration are true believers in mercantilist approaches to tariffs, and what anyone else thinks or wants doesn’t matter. Basically it’s gonna stay super transactional, and there isn’t a broad deal to be had.
At this point the vital ground has to shift to sustaining and prolonging CUSMA to the extent possible in order to protect the still considerable advantages we have, and hope for some luck in the midterms. And diversify as aggressively as possible into other markets and trading relationships. We’ll unavoidably remain joined at the hip economically, but we can reduce the dependence to the extent feasible.

