Canada Says It Could Have Bilateral Critical Sector Deals With the US

• Canada is negotiating with the U.S. to remove tariffs on some critical sectors, and a deal could be wrapped into bilateral pacts alongside a review of the United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement (USMCA), Dominic LeBlanc, a Canadian senior minister, said on Thursday, February 26, 2026.
• LeBlanc, who is responsible for Canada-United States trade, noted that despite some U.S. officials casting doubt on the USMCA, private conversations between the three governments about the pact were not discouraging.
• Canada is trying to persuade the U.S. to reduce or remove painful tariffs on key sectors such as steel, aluminum and automobiles that President Donald Trump's administration imposed last year. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said last year that the talks on sectoral tariffs were likely to be incorporated into the broader USMCA review. Leblanc plans to meet U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer next week.
• "We are still ready and anxious to do that work," LeBlanc told a business audience in Toronto, referring to removing sectoral tariffs. "Those will be bilateral arrangements," LeBlanc said, adjacent to a trilateral trade agreement.
• Mexico already started formal negotiations with the United States on renewal of the USMCA. LeBlanc said that he is not pessimistic about renewing the trilateral framework, given it is in the economic interests of the three signatories to keep it going. The U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade deal is up for review and needs to be completed by July 1, 2026.

(Source: Reuters)