Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney took to the airwaves on August 22 to explain in a speech and Q&A why he walked away from trade negotiations with the United States and thereby opened Canada to economy-crushing tariffs from the country once considered its closest friend. Carney gave three key reasons.
The U.S. proposal, Carney said, demanded compromises on the protection of Canadian culture and the French language, including the promotion of French-language shows on streaming platforms and mandatory labelling in French as well as English on packaging.
Carney also said it was “unacceptable” that the U.S. “wanted to restrict” which countries Canada traded with, which was stipulated in the proposal.
Finally, the U.S., at the last minute, had rewritten items already agreed to: “The U.S. proposed new terms that were uneconomic, unfair, and undermined the net benefits to Canada.” That, he said, called into question “the reliability of any deal.”
The Trump administration’s unreliability, the prime minister explained, was not a new problem or one likely to go away soon.
“If you execute a deal, you have to stand by that deal,” Carney said in the Q&A. “We have a deal with the Americans…. We have side letters that clarify behavior in steel, in aluminum, in autos. All of those are being violated day in, day out.” Under President Donald Trump, Carney said, America’s “signature was written in pencil.”
Other U.S. partners, namely Saudi Arabia and Ukraine, have made similar complaints in recent weeks. After more than a year of negotiations, the U.S. signed a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. The deal stipulated that, following a joint two-year study on economic feasibility, the U.S. would help build a nuclear facility in Saudi Arabia, allowing it to enrich uranium on its own soil.
But the next day, Trump announced on Truth Social, “There will be no enrichment of material!” He went on to stipulate that approval of the deal “is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” the Mideast agreements through which some Muslim-majority countries have normalized relations with Israel. The first stipulation contradicted what Riyadh had signed; the second was added after the fact and seemed designed to kill the deal.
Ukraine too has seen U.S. pledges reversed after they were made. On July 8, Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the U.S. would give Ukraine the right to manufacture Patriot defense missiles. “We’ll show them how to do it,” Trump said. Days later, Trump claimed he’d never agreed to that. Adding painful insult to the injury of eroded trust, Trump explained, “those people you give the technology, they could someday turn on you.” Like Canada, Ukraine has experienced Trump’s signature being written in pencil and America being turned into an apparent adversary.
Perhaps the country with the most extensive recent history of Trump’s diplomatic duplicity is Iran. During the Obama administration, the U.S. and Iran struck a nuclear deal, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iran was verifiably complying with the agreement when Trump withdrew from it in 2018. Nevertheless, Iran appeared willing to negotiate a new agreement even more favorable to the United States. Yet Trump, having torn up the first one, bombed Iran during negotiations on the new one.
The JCPOA had limited Iran to enriching uranium to levels necessary for civilian use but insufficient for weaponization, in accordance with its rights and obligations as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It further subjected Iran to perhaps the toughest inspection regime in history. The JCPOA assured that Iran could not work on building a bomb without the U.S. quickly becoming aware of its efforts. The International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Iran was completely and consistently in compliance with the commitments made under that agreement. It was Trump, not Tehran, who unilaterally broke the agreement and walked away.
Still, after Trump returned to the White House, Iran was willing to renegotiate their civilian nuclear program with the U.S. and was reportedly open to the resumption of maximum inspections, to the dilution of its stockpile of near-weapons-grade enriched uranium, and to caps on future enrichment at the 3.67 percent necessary for a civilian energy program. It even appeared ready to suspend nuclear enrichment for three to five years before joining a nuclear consortium that would distribute the enrichment process across the different member states. Instead, the U.S. attacked Iran, killing its leaders.
Though Trump boasts of the art of the deal, there is a historical pattern that suggests, instead, the art of the broken deal. When asked what message he has for other governments about the reliability of making a deal with the United States, Carney didn’t provide one. Trump’s record, he seemed to think, speaks for itself.
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