Carney hasn’t lived up to his promise in dealing with Trump

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How did Canada get to this point? We went from being a trade priority, close to a deal with Washington to not having a deal and not being a priority.

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Friday came and went and there was no trade deal with Donald Trump. Mark Carney’s point man on Canada-U.S. relations, Dominic LeBlanc left Washington for Moncton, New Brunswick, a clear sign that talks were not continuing in a serious way.

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The Americans don’t take weekends off if things are going well. Last weekend, Trump was announcing a trade deal with the European Union from his golf course in Scotland, while his top trade negotiator Jamieson Greer was in Sweden for talks with China.

This past week in Washington, Canadian officials may have been in the American capital, but they weren’t meeting with top American officials. People like Greer were busy elsewhere and we were relegated.

Meanwhile, Carney couldn’t get Trump to return his phone call.

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“We haven’t spoken to Canada today. He’s called and we’ll see,” Trump said last Thursday when asked about talks with Canada.

On Sunday, LeBlanc told CBS’s Face the Nation that Carney still hadn’t spoken with Trump, but he expected they would in the coming days.

This is really bad for Carney, both in terms of what it means economically for Canada but also compared to what he promised voters.

“I know the president, I’ve dealt with the president in the past in my previous roles when he was in his first term, and I know how to negotiate,” Carney said during the Liberal leadership race that made him PM.

Other countries are getting deals, and we are getting higher tariffs, but it didn’t have to be this way.

When Premier Doug Ford went to Washington for meetings in March, he heard directly from Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that Canada was a priority. They told Ford the April 2 tariffs would come into place and then the Americans would seek to negotiate deals, and Canada was at the top of the list.

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LeBlanc was in that meeting, so was Carney’s now Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne. Though maybe Champagne didn’t hear the message because according to several who are privy to what happened in the room, Champagne was busy trying to explain to the Americans how wrong they were and had to be reined in.

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In early June, talk of a deal coming shortly, before the G7 in Kananaskis was rampant. Officials in Ottawa didn’t deny talks of a deal happening quickly, in fact, they fed into that idea.

The deal didn’t happen before the G7 but while Carney and Trump were holding a media availability at the start of the summit, Trump said a deal could still be reached quickly, perhaps even that day.

A deal didn’t happen in Kananaskis either and one hasn’t happened since. So much for Mark Carney being the “Trump whisperer” as CNN described him, or Carney knowing how to get a deal with Trump.

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Right now, his knowledge of President Trump seems weak, his negotiating skills appear absent.

I know many Canadians, across all political stripes simply hate Trump and appear willing to cheer on anyone who stands against him. My email inbox and social media feeds are regularly filled with people saying you can’t negotiate with a lunatic, meaning Trump, and no one can get a deal with him.

Well, Keir Starmer the British PM got a deal. European Union President Ursula von der Leyen got a deal with Trump, one that includes buying billions of dollars’ worth of liquefied natural gas that the Europeans asked us to sell them and that the Liberal government said there was no business case for.

Mark Carney told Canadians he was the man with the plan, the man with the experience to deliver, but so far, he’s failing.

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