Lutnick accuses Carney of sabotaging trade talks, singles out Ontario in '51st state' comments
· Toronto Sun
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U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick accused Prime Minister Mark Carney of deliberately “blowing up” trade talks, while repeating President Donald Trump’s “51st state” rhetoric while referring to Ontario in a CNBC interview on Wednesday.
Appearing on the news channel’s morning show, Squawk Box , Lutnick made the comments while offering his take on why the trade negotiations fell apart at the last minute on Aug. 21.
Host Joe Kernen began the interview with the commerce secretary by referring to Carney’s message Tuesday to the Trump administration, in which the prime minister said trade discussions could resume if “the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade.”
When Kernen asked Lutnick if he could be “nicer” during the trade talks, Lutnick said Canada’s trade negotiators started “adding crazy ideas to the mix” on the last day of talks.
“And we said, ‘What are you doing?’ And I said to one of the ministers, ‘Are you actually trying to blow this up?’ And his answer to me was, ‘I’m not allowed to say that.’ And they blew up for political reasons only,” Lutnick said in the interview.
Calling the move “disrespectful” of the U.S., Lutnick said the Carney government was using “a kerfluffle with the United States to gain political leverage,” pointing out Quebec’s sovereignty movement and the “independence vote” in Alberta.
Lutnick also said Canada was the “worst performing” nation of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
“Ontario, with the great city of Toronto, would be last out of our 51st states. And you say, really, Toronto and Ontario? They just don’t perform per capita because they don’t have the right tools. They don’t have the right regulation. They don’t have the right leadership,” Lutnick said.
President calls Ford a ‘slob’
Meanwhile, Trump doesn’t appear to be changing tactics.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. president continued to claim that Canada was “ripping off” the U.S. “for many, many years.”
Without referring to the prime minister and Ontario Premier Doug Ford by name, Trump called Carney a “nice guy” and called Ford a “slob.”
He added, “I don’t want to call them that because I want to be nice, but I did change the name of a certain Lake to Lake America, just like I changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.”