When Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada addressed the nation a week ago, hours after walking away from trade talks with the United States, he invited 41 million Canadians into the negotiating room.
They overwhelmingly rallied behind his nerve, which, Mr. Carney said, avoided “a bad deal” that would have put Canada’s sovereignty in the hands of the man who wants to make the country the 51st American state.
Public support allowed Mr. Carney to negotiate fiercely; and it carried him through a high-risk moment for the country’s economy as he suspended the talks.
Walking away is a typical negotiating move, usually deployed to break through an impasse and arm the departing party with an advantage. The point is to start again from a better position.
So when the time comes to reopen trade talks with the United States, the enthusiastic public support that has buttressed Mr. Carney’s choices has the potential to become an obstacle. He will need to somehow tap into Canadians’ pragmatism and understanding of the economic predicament the country will face if the trade war with the United States goes on. And even so, there is a risk that many of them, angered and defiant today, could feel misled if a return to talks is not handled with care.
Before President Trump set off a global eye-roll by signing an executive order on Thursday afternoon to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America,” the first sign of de-escalation in the frayed U.S.-Canada relationship had started to show.
In an interview on Wednesday with the CBC, Canada’s national broadcaster, Jamieson Greer, the United States’ trade representative, said that demands raised by the U.S. side during discussions about the promotion of Canadian content on U.S. online streaming platforms had not been a deal breaker.
The next day, Dominic LeBlanc, a senior Canadian cabinet minister who played a leading role in the talks, welcomed Mr. Greer’s comment, cautiously putting a toe back in the water.
“We look forward to further constructive U.S. clarifications on their other positions which would create the possibility of a mutually beneficial trade agreement that respects Canadian sovereignty,” he said in a statement.
It was, perhaps, too soon.
Mere hours later, Mr. Trump signed his executive order renaming Lake Ontario and called Canadian leadership “nasty.”
Officials from both sides have said they’re not currently talking, and it is clear that, for any conversation to restart in earnest, a cooling-off period will be needed, and the next few months will provide a map for when talks may restart.
Canada’s countertariffs against U.S. goods are set to take effect on Sept. 8, while a further round of U.S. levies announced by Mr. Trump, which will further raise existing tariffs against Canadian goods such as automobiles and steel, will begin on Jan. 1. The U.S. midterm elections in November also present an opportunity for Mr. Carney, who has targeted countertariffs on U.S. products with swing states in mind.
A seasoned negotiator from his days in finance, Mr. Carney is unlikely to wait to return to the table when the Canadian economy has begun to show real signs of strain. The months ahead will be hard for Canadians. In the case of industries already under tariffs since last year — steel, aluminum, softwood lumber, autos and automobile parts — the protracted and escalating trade war means more unemployment and uncertainty.
Mr. Carney’s government has acknowledged this pain, and announced plans to mitigate some of it. In the meantime, the Canadian economy is showing good vital signs: On Friday, it registered a 3.3 percent growth rate in the second quarter of the year, the fastest since early 2023.
Additionally, the public’s resolve for Canada to stand its ground against the Trump administration appears solid.
“I’ve been looking at this data for a long time, and people have been unequivocal and clear: We’ve had majorities now for more than a year, saying we should take a tough approach, we should take a hard line, we should not give away too much,” said Shachi Kurl, who leads the Angus Reid Institute, a nonpartisan public opinion research organization in Canada.
Polling released soon after the talks collapsed showed that three-quarters of Canadians backed Mr. Carney’s decision.
Returning to trade talks given all that has transpired will require Canadians to hold two truths at once: Alongside their genuine, heightened patriotism in the face of Mr. Trump’s tariffs and his menacing rhetoric toward Canada, they will need to also be pragmatic about the economic reality the country faces as the trade war takes hold.
That pragmatism will be necessary if Mr. Carney can count on the broad support he has today to return to talks with the United States and see if he can get a better deal than the one he left on the table.
“Canadians are completely aware that this is the most important economic relationship that we have,” Ms. Kurl said. “There is absolutely pragmatism there.”
Polling shows that Canadians are concerned about the economy and their jobs, just as they are asking Mr. Carney to stick up for them.
Much of how Mr. Carney’s negotiating position plays out will come down to his ability to guide public opinion as he makes the case for giving trade talks another chance.
“He will have to come back and say: ‘Look, if that was the right thing to do then, this is the right thing to do now. Stick with me, trust me,’” Mr. Kurl said.
