{"id":8408,"date":"2026-04-17T21:28:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T21:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/8408\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T21:28:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T21:28:20","slug":"trumps-commerce-secretary-howard-lutnick-unloads-on-canada-they-suck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/8408\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick unloads on Canada: ‘They suck’"},"content":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA \u2014 Asked Friday for his thoughts on Canada\u2019s negotiating strategy with the United States, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick didn\u2019t mince words<\/a>: \u201cGood for them. That\u2019s like the worst strategy I have ever heard. They suck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lutnick appeared to be responding to comments by Steve Verheul<\/a>, who was Canada\u2019s chief trade negotiator for the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement during the first Trump administration, who said \u201cin many ways, time is on our side because the pressures on the U.S. are only going to increase over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lutnick didn\u2019t agree.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a $30 trillion economy. We are the consumer of the world. Carney has a problem with us. He gets on a plane and he goes to China. Does he think the Chinese economy is going to buy his stuff?\u201d said Lutnick, at the Semafor World Economy summit. \u201cChina is an entirely export-driven economy. So what did he do? He came back and said, \u2018we\u2019ll take their electric cars.\u2019 Is this nuts?\u201d<\/p>\n

White House officials later told the New York Times<\/a> that the commerce secretary was \u201cbeing misquoted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lutnick also took a shot at former minister Chrystia Freeland, who was also involved in talks with the U.S. on CUSMA during the first Trump administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho? Chrystia Freeland, who\u2019s like the worst?\u201d said Lutnick, when asked about Verheul\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n

CUSMA is up for review this summer, with the deadline for the beginning of talks set for July 1.<\/p>\n

In mid-March, United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Fox Business that Canada was behind Mexico on trade discussions. Greer has also said it\u2019s unlikely the U.S. administration will resolve all its trade issues with Canada and Mexico by the July 1 deadline.<\/p>\n

This week, Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said there is no \u201cdrop dead date\u201d for the review and that Canada \u201ccertainly won\u2019t be the source of any delays.\u201d<\/p>\n

National Post, with files from Jordan Gowling.<\/p>\n

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com<\/a> and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2014 Asked Friday for his thoughts on Canada\u2019s negotiating strategy with the United States, U.S. Commerce Secretary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4744,17,1061,4743,590,4741,4742,4745,4740,3211],"class_list":{"0":"post-8408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ben-smith","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-chrystia-freeland","11":"tag-dc","12":"tag-howard-lutnick","13":"tag-secretary-of-commerce","14":"tag-semafor","15":"tag-steve-verheul","16":"tag-u-s-department-of-commerce","17":"tag-washington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}