The midterms are over. Will Trump still want to make a deal with Canada? - National Post

News The midterms are over. Will Trump still want to make a deal with Canada? Join the conversation Share Close Share this article

Copy URL Facebook Linked In X (Twitter) Loading account options Sign In Manage Account Close account menu Sign Out U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a midterm campaign rally in Dubuque, Iowa, on Nov. 1, 2026. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images) By Tracy Moran November 4, 2026 at 4:00 a.m. WASHINGTON, D.C. — As U.S. midterm elections loomed over the weekend, Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Donald Trump spoke and publicly suggested that trade talks could restart soon.

Carney said the two countries “will now be working in the coming weeks to deliver that outcome.”

“We have the concept of a very good deal with Canada,” he said in Iowa on Sunday. He said the deal would be “great for our farmers, great for our country, and it’ll be fine for Canada, too” and claimed the long-dead Keystone XL pipeline was being revived — and that Canada would pay for it.

So, will trade talks get underway soon, or was this just political messaging ahead of yesterday’s U.S. midterm elections?

Trade analysts and industry analysts have responded with everything from total skepticism to cautious optimism, but several said Trump’s incentive for negotiating post-election remained the same: unpopular tariffs are squeezing U.S. consumers and businesses.

Jamie Tronnes, executive director of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security, suggested that Trump’s warmer tone this week may reflect exposure on the campaign trail to criticism that his advisers normally filter out.

“The president is now no longer stuck in the Oval Office getting his information filtered through a bubble of advisors,” she said. “He’s been … meeting with candidates and seeing and hearing directly from people on the campaign trail about what’s actually affecting the campaigns.”

Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, also senses a change.

“Americans have come to equate tariffs with rising prices, with hits to their own pocketbook, and I think the administration is recognizing this,” he said. “I’m not going to go out on a limb and predict that a deal is imminent. But I do think the political environment for a deal is considerably better than it was even two, three months ago.”

But, so far, analysts have seen no movement on the biggest sticking points for Ottawa: Trump’s Section 232 tariffs on autos and steel.

Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association and a member of Carney’s Advisory Committee on Canada-U.S. Economic Relations, said he had seen no indication that Washington was prepared to improve its previous offer on the auto tariffs, discussed before talks broke down in August. But he does see Trump having an incentive to negotiate after the election, whatever happens, because tariffs are squeezing U.S. automakers, and industry pressure will continue to grow.

“There is a real pressure, a real squeeze on Detroit right now that comes from Washington,” he said.

At the same time, he remained cautious about the warmer rhetoric.

“I think we’re hearing (a warmer tone from Trump) because it’s helpful to speak reasonably during a tough midterm,” said Volpe. “But I haven’t seen any term sheet exchange.”

Volpe said the industry had not yet been engaged in formal consultation, but he remains hopeful and slightly more confident than not that negotiations will restart soon.

Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s office, meanwhile, said the trade minister has no current plans to visit Washington, and no new Washington visit has been publicly confirmed for the chief negotiator, Janice Charette.

Tronnes said her metric for how serious things are getting is “if those guys are on a plane,” but Volpe says talks can happen from anywhere and that it’s the terms that matter most.

According to him, the earlier U.S. offer — a 15 per cent headline tariff with an exemption for U.S. content — would have produced an effective auto tariff of about 7.5 per cent on average. That remained unworkable, he said, because it exceeded the industry’s 2024 EBITDA margin of 6 per cent.

“The math hasn’t changed,” he said. “That tariff has to be materially lower than the profit margin.”

Still, several trade analysts cautioned that Trump’s warmer words did not necessarily signal a broader change in his trade policy.

“He’s had an enormous capacity to disappoint when it comes to critical international relations matters and strategic matters like this,” said Andrew Hale, fellow at Advancing American Freedom in Washington.

A U-turn on auto tariffs could also undermine Trump’s reshoring plans. And since the steel, aluminum, and auto tariffs serve that agenda, Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute, sees major concessions as politically and strategically difficult.

“I would be very surprised if all of a sudden it turns out that the White House is very flexible on (the sectoral tariffs) when they weren’t just a couple of months ago,” he said.

Lawrence Herman, senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute, is even more skeptical.

“There’s no indication that Trump and the MAGA team are going to give up the power to adjust trade relations on the basis of their own view of US national security interests, and that can be very broadly framed,” he said.

“There may be some accommodation in specific areas. But overall, the trading relationship is going to continue to be a very difficult one.”

Fen Osler Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University, tends to agree a reversal is unlikely.

“In the best scenario, we see a reduction that we can live with,” he said. But he also pointed to the timing of an electoral issue for Canada.Hampson suggested that Carney may have less room to manoeuvre, especially if a deal involves politically sensitive dairy concessions, until after Dec. 7, when six federal by-elections will be held — three in Quebec, two in Ontario and one in Saskatchewan.“So maybe we get a Christmas surprise here,” Hampson said, noting that the big question of how Trump will act between now and then remains. “Does Trump get to play Santa Claus or the Grinch who stole Christmas?”For Laura Dawson, executive director of the Future Borders Coalition, the opening is encouraging — even if the outcome remains undefined.“I think we’re in the best window for a resolution of some of the major trade irritants,” she said. “But I don’t know what a deal looks like at this point.”

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