Trump Says Canada Is ‘Dying to Make a Deal’ as Carney Starts Building a New Alliance With Europe

35,000+ smart investors are already getting financial news, market signals, and macro shifts in the economy that could impact their money next with our FREE weekly newsletter. Get ahead of what the crowd finds out too late. Click Here to Subscribe for FREE.

Donald Trump says Canada is “dying to make a deal.” Mark Carney appears determined to make sure Canada has more places to turn if Washington keeps raising the price of one.

The contrast captures the rapidly changing Canada-U.S. relationship. Weeks after bilateral trade negotiations collapsed and a fresh round of tariffs took effect, Trump is portraying Ottawa as increasingly desperate for access to its largest market. Carney, meanwhile, is pushing deeper into Europe, describing the goal not as European Union membership but as a potentially “unique alliance” spanning trade, defence, technology, energy and critical minerals.

Europe cannot replace the United States as Canada’s dominant commercial partner anytime soon. Geography and decades of integrated supply chains make that unrealistic. But Carney’s strategy could change something almost as important: how much leverage Washington has the next time Canada sits down to negotiate.

Trump’s “Dying to Make a Deal” Remark Comes After Talks Broke Down

Trump made the remark during a Republican midterm convention in Dallas, saying Canada “very much wants to make a deal” before adding that it was “dying to make a deal.” The statement came after a bruising August in which negotiations between Ottawa and Washington collapsed and the United States proceeded with another round of punitive tariffs. For Trump, the message was straightforward: U.S. market power would eventually force Canada back to the negotiating table on American terms.

The pressure is substantial. Washington imposed tariffs of 50 per cent on approximately C$27.6 billion worth of Canadian goods effective August 22. Canada responded with matching counter-tariffs covering C$27.6 billion in U.S. imports, with rates of 15, 25 and 50 per cent taking effect September 8. The Canadian measures target sectors including steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, plastics and electronics. That is no longer a theoretical dispute over negotiating language. Importers, exporters and workers on both sides of the border are dealing with actual barriers.

Ottawa Is Not Acting Like a Government Preparing to Accept Any Deal

Trump’s description suggests Canada has reached the point where access to the American market matters more than the conditions attached to it. Ottawa’s recent decisions point in a different direction. The Canadian government says it suspended negotiations because the terms being requested by Washington were neither fair nor economically acceptable. Instead of accepting those conditions, it proceeded with retaliation and billions of dollars in additional support for businesses and workers exposed to the tariff fight.

That does not mean Carney has shut the door on Washington. He has repeatedly left room for negotiations to restart, provided the talks are serious and respect Canadian interests and sovereignty. This distinction matters. Canada clearly has powerful economic reasons to reach an agreement with the United States, but wanting an agreement is not the same as being prepared to sign whatever is placed on the table. Carney’s broader strategy appears designed to make that distinction increasingly credible by creating economic options elsewhere.

Carney Is Now Talking About a “Unique Alliance” With Europe

The most ambitious part of that diversification effort is taking shape across the Atlantic. Carney clarified this weekend that Canada is not seeking EU membership after reports raised the possibility of some form of associate status. What Ottawa wants instead, he said, is a “unique alliance” reflecting the unusually close relationship Canada already has with European democracies.

The possibilities being explored go well beyond selling more Canadian products into Europe. Discussions reported by Reuters include deeper movement of goods, services and workers in strategic sectors such as artificial intelligence, defence, energy and critical minerals. Cooperation on data centres, subsea infrastructure and other large projects has also entered the conversation. Some of those concepts remain exploratory rather than settled policy, which is an important distinction. Still, the direction is unusually ambitious. Canada is looking at Europe not simply as another export destination but as a potential economic-security partner capable of reducing vulnerabilities created by dependence on a single dominant market.

Europe Is Already Canada’s Second-Largest Trade Partner

Carney does not have to construct the economic relationship from scratch. The European Union is already Canada’s second-largest trading partner for goods and services after the United States. Canadian government figures put combined Canada-EU trade in goods and services at C$178.6 billion in 2025. The EU is also one of Canada’s largest sources of foreign direct investment, while Canadian companies have hundreds of billions of dollars invested across EU member states.

CETA gives the relationship a foundation that did not exist during earlier attempts to diversify Canadian trade. Provisionally applied since 2017, the agreement removed or reduced barriers across a large range of commercial activity. European Commission data show bilateral goods-and-services trade reached roughly €130 billion in 2025, approximately 80 per cent above its 2016 level. Those numbers remain far below Canada-U.S. commerce, but they demonstrate something important for Carney’s strategy: Europe is already a sizable market with a functioning trade architecture. Expanding an established relationship is easier than inventing one.

Defence Has Quietly Become One of the Strongest Canada-Europe Links

One of the clearest examples of the changing relationship is defence procurement. Canada became the first non-European country to participate in the European Union’s Security Action for Europe, or SAFE, initiative. SAFE provides up to €150 billion in loans to eligible EU member states for large-scale defence procurement, part of Europe’s drive to rebuild military capacity and strengthen its industrial base.

Canadian companies gained unusually broad access under the arrangement. Federal defence documents say Canadian industry can account for as much as 80 per cent of the value of eligible SAFE procurement contracts, substantially increasing the opportunity for Canadian manufacturers to participate in European supply chains. That matters beyond military policy. Aerospace, communications equipment, cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence frequently overlap with civilian technologies. Ottawa has also highlighted concrete deals, including a contract worth more than C$10 million for Montréal-based Marconi Technologies to supply tactical radios to Poland. In other words, strategic alignment is already beginning to generate commercial opportunities.

Carney Is Pairing Foreign Diversification With a Pitch for Global Capital

The European push is also connected to a broader effort to change the way international investors think about Canada. At the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto, Carney is hosting hundreds of executives representing companies and institutions controlling enormous pools of global capital. According to the Associated Press, roughly 300 executives representing more than US$120 trillion in assets are involved in the gathering.

For decades, one of Canada’s strongest investment arguments was straightforward: build in Canada and gain privileged access to the enormous U.S. market. The trade fight makes that argument less reliable. Carney is therefore emphasizing a different combination of advantages — energy, critical minerals, skilled workers, political stability and access to markets through Canada’s international trade agreements. A stronger European relationship would reinforce that pitch. A battery-materials producer, defence contractor or data-centre operator would no longer need to view Canada primarily as a northern doorway into the United States. Ottawa wants Canada itself to become the strategic platform.

Trump Still Has One Enormous Advantage: Geography

Diversification may be accelerating, but Canada remains deeply tied to the United States. Statistics Canada reported that 71.7 per cent of Canadian merchandise exports went to the U.S. in 2025. That was down from 75.9 per cent in 2024, yet it still means more than seven out of every 10 export dollars in merchandise depended on one market. In industries built around cross-border production, the dependence can be even more pronounced.

That is why Trump’s pressure cannot simply be dismissed as rhetoric. Canadian factories frequently operate as components of North American production systems rather than isolated national operations. Auto parts can cross the border repeatedly before a finished vehicle reaches a dealership. Energy pipelines, electricity infrastructure, railways and trucking networks were built around north-south commerce. Europe is thousands of kilometres away and generally requires ocean freight rather than a truck crossing at Windsor or a pipeline crossing the Prairies. Carney can reduce concentration risk, but no diplomatic agreement can erase geography. Washington will remain economically indispensable even if its share of Canadian trade continues declining.

The Data Show Diversification Is Nevertheless Starting to Happen

The most interesting part of Canada’s trade numbers is not that the United States remains dominant. It is that its dominance has already been weakening. Statistics Canada found that merchandise exports to the U.S. fell 5.8 per cent in 2025, while exports to countries outside the United States increased 17.2 per cent. Total merchandise trade with non-U.S. countries climbed 14.3 per cent to C$553 billion.

More recent monthly figures reinforce the shift, though they can fluctuate sharply. In July 2026, Canada exported approximately C$50.5 billion in goods to the United States out of roughly C$76.1 billion in total merchandise exports — about two-thirds of the monthly total. Exports to China, the United Kingdom, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands were all substantially higher than a year earlier in that month. Not every increase represents permanent diversification, and commodities such as precious metals can distort short-term totals. Even so, the broader pattern gives Carney evidence that Canadian trade flows can move when incentives change.

Europe Cannot Simply Replace the United States

There are limits to how far Carney can take the European strategy. CETA itself illustrates the problem. Although much of the agreement has been provisionally applied since 2017, full ratification across the EU has remained incomplete. A more ambitious arrangement touching mobility, industrial policy, defence, energy and digital regulation could be politically and legally more complicated than a conventional trade agreement.

Businesses face practical barriers as well. Shipping a Canadian product to Rotterdam or Hamburg is fundamentally different from loading it onto a truck headed to Michigan. European countries have their own regulations, procurement policies, industrial interests and domestic political pressures. The EU is itself becoming more protective of strategic industries as governments worry about Chinese imports, American tariffs and the erosion of European manufacturing. Canada may therefore find Europe receptive as a geopolitical partner while still encountering tough negotiations over individual industries. The realistic objective is not substitution. It is creating enough alternative demand, investment and supply-chain capacity that disruption in the United States becomes less catastrophic.

Canada May Still Make a U.S. Deal — But It Wants More Leverage When It Does

Nothing about Carney’s European strategy requires Canada to abandon negotiations with Washington. Both economies have too much invested in their relationship for that to be a practical objective. Carney has indicated that Canada remains prepared to return to serious trade discussions, while Trump has repeatedly oscillated between harsh criticism of Canada and predictions that an agreement can ultimately be reached.

What is changing is the environment around those negotiations. Ottawa is retaliating against U.S. tariffs, courting investors, building defence-industrial links with Europe and exploring a relationship with the EU that could become substantially deeper than CETA. Carney is expected to continue his European diplomacy with visits and high-level engagements that underline that shift. Trump may be correct that Canada strongly wants a workable American trade agreement. The more consequential question is whether Canada will still feel it has to accept one on Washington’s terms. Building stronger connections with Europe is Carney’s attempt to make the answer increasingly clear.

This Options Discord Chat is The Real Deal

While the internet is scoured with trading chat rooms, many of which even charge upwards of thousands of dollars to join, this smaller options trading discord chatroom is the real deal and actually providing valuable trade setups, education, and community without the noise and spam of the larger more expensive rooms. With a incredibly low-cost monthly fee, Options Trading Club (click here to see their reviews) requires an application to join ensuring that every member is dedicated and serious about taking their trading to the next level. If you are looking for a change in your trading strategies, then click here to apply for a membership.