{"id":196010,"date":"2026-08-20T21:38:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T21:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/196010\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T21:38:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T21:38:16","slug":"quebecs-premier-says-canada-us-trade-talks-are-far-from-over-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/196010\/","title":{"rendered":"Quebec\u2019s premier says Canada-US trade talks are \u2018far from over\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By ROB GILLIES<\/p>\n

TORONTO (AP) \u2014 The premier of a Canadian province launched a blistering attack on\u00a0U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday, calling him a \u201cbad person\u201d and \u201cnot to be trusted\u201d and urging Canada to keep fighting rather than rush to make concessions in trade talks with Washington.<\/p>\n

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said Canada has leverage in the talks even as his province weighs restoring U.S. alcohol sales at Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s urging to help secure a deal that would avert\u00a0threatened 50% U.S. tariffs.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"FILEFILE \u2013 Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew talks to media as he arrives for a first ministers meeting in Ottawa on Jan.15, 2025. (Sean Kilpatrick\/The Canadian Press via AP, File)<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody knows the American president by now, he\u2019s erratic, he\u2019s irresponsible, and he\u2019s not to be trusted. And this is the person that we were supposed to make a deal with, and we\u2019re going to make additional concessions for it. That\u2019s why I say you can\u2019t make a good deal with a bad person, because who\u2019s to say it\u2019s not going to be undone?\u201d Kinew said.<\/p>\n

Dominic LeBlanc, the federal minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade, said Thursday the two countries were close to finalizing an agreement after he returned to Washington to meet again with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very close. We continue to make progress,\u201d he said, adding that Canadian officials would remain in Washington to keep working on the deal. Trump has called the emerging agreement \u201cvery fair\u201d to both sides, while tariffs on about $20 billion worth of Canadian imports have been postponed until 12:01 a.m. Saturday. Neither side has released the full terms.<\/p>\n

Despite his criticism of Trump, Kinew said Manitoba may go along with Carney\u2019s request as part of a \u201cTeam Canada\u201d approach. But he urged consumers to keep buying Canadian even if U.S. products return to provincial liquor stores. Other provincial leaders, including the premiers of Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, have publicly backed the direction of Carney\u2019s negotiation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we should fight. I think Donald Trump is very weak. I think America is weaker around the world today than it was a year ago. He\u2019s about to get slaughtered in the midterms and the cost of living is the number one issue and he\u2019s completely out of touch the cost of living of Americans,\u201d Kinew said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got the upper hand. They are back on their heels right now. They are coming to us for a deal right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Restoring alcohol sales a sticking point<\/p>\n

Kinew said he understood Carney\u2019s request to mean that restoring U.S. alcohol sales was effectively necessary to complete the deal. The provincial bans on U.S. alcohol have been a particular irritant for the Trump administration, which has pressed Canada to remove restrictions that sharply reduced American liquor sales.<\/p>\n

Provincial governments do not have a veto over the overall Canada-U.S. agreement, but they control measures such as liquor sales and some procurement rules that have become part of the negotiations.<\/p>\n

Eight of Canada\u2019s 10 provinces restrict or ban U.S. alcohol \u2014 measures imposed in retaliation for Trump\u2019s previous tariffs on Canadian goods and amid anger over his repeated talk of making Canada the 51st U.S. state.<\/p>\n

\"RolledRolled coils of steel sit in the yard at the ArcelorMittal Dofasco steel plant in Hamilton, Ont. on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (Nick Iwanyshyn \/The Canadian Press via AP)<\/p>\n

Kinew said Carney strongly pressed premiers to restore U.S. alcohol sales while other details of the agreement were still being finalized. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that he was begging us, but what is the step before begging?\u201d Kinew said.<\/p>\n

Ontario, Canada\u2019s most populous province, is especially important. Its government-run LCBO, one of the world\u2019s largest alcohol purchasers, sold nearly 1 billion Canadian dollars ($723 million) worth of U.S. products annually before pulling them from shelves last year.<\/p>\n

Ontario Premier Doug Ford<\/a>, who has clashed with Trump before, has not yet commented on the emerging deal.<\/p>\n

Kinew said Canadians should not buy American products even if they return.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we put the American booze back on the Liquor Mart shelves, Canadians, leave it there. Spend your money on Canadian products that are going to employ people in our country and that have an administration that respects Canada,\u201d Kinew said.<\/p>\n

Kinew also said Manitoba could agree to remove formal restrictions on U.S. companies and products, including procurement preferences, while continuing to favor Canadian suppliers in its own purchasing.<\/p>\n

Kinew said he preferred to keep fighting, noting the U.S. Republican president\u2019s tendency to levy extremely high import taxes and then retreat. He mentioned what\u2019s known as the \u201cTACO\u201d trade, an acronym coined by The Financial Times\u2019 Robert Armstrong that stands for \u201cTrump Always Chickens Out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo we expect that this is going to be the end of Donald Trump?\u201d Kinew said.<\/p>\n

Quebec Premier Christine Fr\u00e9chette, meanwhile, said Carney had answered many of her questions about the emerging agreement but stopped short of endorsing it while the province assesses the economic impact. She said Quebec could restore U.S. alcohol to shelves at the SAQ, the Quebec government corporation that controls most wine and spirits sales in the province, but stressed that the decision would be Quebec\u2019s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By ROB GILLIES TORONTO (AP) \u2014 The premier of a Canadian province launched a blistering attack on\u00a0U.S. President…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[125],"tags":[87546,12,242,87547,1109,59386],"class_list":["post-196010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-emmanuel-macron","tag-christine-frechette","tag-donald-trump","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-trump-canada-tariffs","tag-us-canada","tag-us-canada-trade"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117130002832325954","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}