Carney tells Trump administration to stop memes, get serious on trade talks

Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday that Canada is ready to negotiate a trade deal with the United States — but only if the Trump administration stops the social media attacks and starts taking negotiations seriously.

Since trade talks fell apart, President Trump has escalated tariffs and launched repeated online jabs at Canada. He even claimed via social media that he was renaming Lake Ontario 'Lake America' and said Canada has nothing the U.S. wants or needs. U.S. Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added to the animosity with posts mocking female cadets at a training centre in Vernon, B.C.

Carney said the mockery was "beneath their office" and an indicator that the U.S. isn't taking the trade crisis seriously. "When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough, and start being serious about having those discussions, we can have those discussions," Carney told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday.

The Prime Minister defended Canada's decision to walk away from the table, saying the U.S. had demanded terms that would either turn core Canadian industries into subsidiaries of American companies or gradually eliminate them. Carney said Canada will not accept those conditions.

Canada has responded with its own counter-tariffs. While Carney expressed hope that cooler heads will eventually prevail, he acknowledged that negotiations would need to shift in tone and substance before the two countries could move forward. "There is a mutually beneficial deal," he said, "but we never viewed that we had that deal and it diverged towards the end."