U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Friday suggested the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on free trade (CUSMA) may need to be substantially reworked before it’s renewed, saying U.S. President Donald Trump views it as “a bad deal.”
Speaking at the Semafor World Economy summit in Washington, Lutnick took particular aim at the agreement’s impact on the U.S. auto industry, which Trump has sought to bolster by tariffing Canadian- and Mexican-made vehicles and auto parts while incentivizing automakers to invest in the U.S.
“I think he thinks it’s a bad deal,” he said when asked if Trump was committed to renewing CUSMA, which Lutnick said should “be reconsidered and re-imagined correctly.”
“There are parts of Mexico that are fundamental to us. There are parts of Canada — you know, their energy and other things — that are important to us,” he continued. “But the concept of taking an auto plant out of Ohio and Michigan and putting it in Mexico to break the union and to break our people is nuts. That’s a bad industrial policy, it harmed America, President Trump is going to fix it.
“There’s plenty of good in it, but there’s a huge amount of bad and it needs to be reconsidered for the benefit of America.”
Lutnick then went further by criticizing remarks this week by Canada’s former chief trade negotiator Steve Verheul, who suggested “time is on our side” in the trade talks because of increasing political pressure on the Trump administration.
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“That is like the worst strategy I’ve ever heard,” Lutnick replied. “They suck, they — look, we are a $30-trillion economy, right? We are the consumer of the world.”
A U.S. Commerce Department spokesperson later clarified to Global News that Lutnick was “describing our unfair trade imbalance with Canada” and was referring to “how Canada sucks off of our $30-trillion economy.”
“[Prime Minister Mark] Carney has a problem with us, he gets on a plane and he goes to China,” Lutnick continued, pointing to Canada’s recent trade agreement with Beijing that includes a limited number of Chinese electric vehicle imports. The deal also included Chinese commitments to buy Canadian agricultural goods.
“Does he think China, the Chinese economy, is going to buy his stuff? China is an entirely export-driven economy. So what did he do? He came back and said, ‘Oh, we’ll take their electric cars.’ I mean, is this nuts?”
Days after the deal with China was announced, Canada’s Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald said China was already beginning to order imports of Canadian canola oil and beef.
Public video feeds from the event cut out this portion of Lutnick’s comments, which came immediately after his remarks on the future of CUSMA.
Right before the feed appeared to glitch and jumped to a different topic, Lutnick called former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland — who helped negotiate CUSMA during Trump’s first term — “the worst” when he thought the moderator was asking about comments by her, rather than Verheul.
Semafor provided Global News the full, unedited video of the event with Lutnick.
Earlier in the event, Lutnick — a billionaire businessman with no prior political experience before Trump named him commerce secretary — said the “worst thing” he’s discovered about politics “is the sucking sound of how many people try to suck off of the U.S. government.”
A spokesperson for Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s office told Global News they would not be commenting on Lutnick’s remarks.
The comments come a day after LeBlanc told the House of Commons international trade committee that he had a “positive” 45-minute phone call with Lutnick last Monday.
He said “constructive” negotiations between Canadian and U.S. officials were ongoing leading up to July’s scheduled review of CUSMA, where all three countries will have to decide whether to renew the agreement, withdraw or keep negotiations open for annual reviews.
Speaking to Global News after the committee hearing, LeBlanc acknowledged that public comments made earlier this month by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer — who said it was unlikely that “all issues” surrounding the trade pact will be resolved by July 1 — were also made to him privately.
That’s not a “drop-dead date” for a deal to be reached, LeBlanc said, but he added that Canada is ready to move as soon as the Americans are.
“We certainly won’t be the source of any delay,” he said.
LeBlanc told the committee that Canada was pursuing negotiations that would address issues with CUSMA as well as relief for Canadian sectors like steel, aluminum and autos that have been harmed by Trump’s tariffs.
He suggested those talks were “moving forward” despite Trump suspending high-level negotiations last fall that had been focused on those sectors as well as energy.
“I would have hoped that by last fall we would have resolved part of the situation,” the minister told MPs. “Now we’re back around the table to do the work.”
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