Howard Lutnick Claims Carney ‘Used’ The US Trade Talks For His Own ‘Political Purposes’

(Saul Loeb/Pool via AP)

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney “used” failed trade talks with the United States for his own own political gain before Canada’s upcoming elections.

Carney issued a blistering statement after talks broke down over the weekend saying “last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”

But Lutnick disputed that during a sidewalk gaggle on Thursday.

“I met with their trade minister, [Dominic] LeBlanc, at least 10 times in the last month. I spoke to Mark Carney twice in the 24 hours before this ended. Twice,” Lutnick emphasized.

He continued:

I have texts back and forth with Mark Carney. I have a long-standing relationship with him from when he worked at Goldman Sachs way back when, let alone when he was at the bank. So, I’ve known him a long time. So, it’s easy for me to communicate with him, right? Canada had the best trade deal in the world before we started. We negotiated and Canada was going to have the best trade deal in the world. And what happened was that Canada walked away — we had a deal, we shook hands, the president announced it, right? And everybody was positive. Canada made the decision for political purposes. They wanted to walk away. This is politics only.

Lutnick said preserving the French language and culture of Quebec had nothing to do with talks, as claimed by Carney during a press conference.

“Do I care about how the Québécois speak? I mean, what could matter less to America? We don’t care!” Lutnick said. “So the fact is, we never brought those words up. This is manufacturing. That’s why the president put out a Truth saying it was a complete lie, right? It was manufactured. ”

Lutnick said that the Canadians will come running back once their October elections are over:

So there’s the sovereignty party trying to run, and they’re in the lead in Quebec. And so this was Mark Carney manufacturing something that would try to keep them from winning. And then you have Alberta, has an independence resolution. These are elections in October. So he’s making this a political thing for Canada. And my guess will be, as soon as his elections are over, you’re going to see a plane full of Canadian negotiators flying down and going, ‘Come on, come on, we’ll give it to you before your election!’ We’re just being used by them, right? That’s what happened. That’s why it ended. It didn’t happen for math. The math was sensational. It was a great deal that we shook hands on.

After the talks failed, an enraged Donald Trump announced 50% tariffs on Canadian goods, which Carney then said he would match on U.S. goods coming in to Canada.

Watch the clip above via X.

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