The US-Canada trade deal collapsed Friday night — and American autoworkers are better off for it.

For decades, globalist trade agreements have hollowed out US manufacturing by flooding the market with cheap foreign steel and aluminum. This deal would have continued that tradition: Washington was prepared to lower tariffs on Canadian automobiles, aluminum, and steel if Ottawa dropped its retaliatory tariffs on dairy and lumber, according to POLITICO. Canada walked away instead — and the 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products stay in place, the Associated Press reported.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer laid the blame on Ottawa. "Canada declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week," Greer said Friday. "Despite the U.S. offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada upended the careful balance reached in the past days." He called it "a missed opportunity for Canada to partner with the U.S., which is the fastest growing economy in the G7."

Leftist Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney saw it differently. In a Friday press release, Carney said the proposals "have not been enough to meet our objectives for Canadians" and that "last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal." Carney suspended negotiations and directed Canada's negotiators to return to Ottawa, vowing to match U.S. tariffs "dollar for dollar."

The USTR's office pushed back hard, noting that Canada "is continuing to maintain its prolonged retaliation against the United States, including, among other things, flat-out prohibitions on certain American goods and services." The USTR emphasized that "for decades, Canada has enjoyed the most favorable access to the U.S. market of any country" — and that the U.S. offer included not just tariff reductions but supply chain coordination on aerospace, critical minerals cooperation, enforcement against imports produced with forced labor, and formal USMCA negotiations. Breitbart detailed the full scope of the U.S. offer; the Daily Caller buried it, focusing instead on consumer price anxiety.

The establishment press will tell you this collapse means higher prices at the dealership. Canada accounted for roughly 23 percent of U.S. steel imports and 53 percent of U.S. aluminum imports in 2024, according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Auto debt is already climbing — the average new-car loan rose from $41,473 in Q1 2025 to $43,899 in Q1 2026, per Edmund's, and used car prices are up 38.2 percent since 2019, per iSeeCars.

But here's what the globalists won't say: roughly 90 percent of Canada's exports of those same resources went to American companies in 2023, per Statista. Canada needs this deal far more than we do. When Trump imposed 50 percent duties on Canadian goods over discrimination against American autos, Ottawa felt it. The leverage runs one direction.

President Trump had announced a pending deal on Truth Social on Aug. 18, pausing the 50 percent tariffs for three days. That pause is over. The tariffs are back — and American steel and auto workers face less downward pressure from cheap Canadian imports.

Carney says he's looking for new trade partners abroad. Let him find them.