Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent labels Canada’s trade pivot with China a reversal of prior policy

Scott Bessent isn’t buying what Mark Carney is selling. The Treasury Secretary said Sunday that Carney’s latest deal with Beijing is a flat-out reversal of what Canada agreed to just months ago. He said this directly backs Donald Trump’s warning that Canada could face 100% U.S. tariffs if it keeps acting as a trade loophole for China.

“The Canadians a few months ago joined the US in putting high steel tariffs on China because the Chinese are dumping,” Scott said on ABC’s This Week. “The Europeans also have done the same thing. And it looks like that Prime Minister Carney may have done some kind of about-face.”

Canada lifts EV tariffs after deal with Xi

This all started when Canada cut tariffs on 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles, dropping them from 100% to just 6%. That was part of a new arrangement Carney worked out with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Carney said he expects Beijing to respond by dropping restrictions on Canadian rapeseed imports. But Washington sees this as Canada handing China the keys to the North American supply chain.

Scott warned that if Canada moves forward with a free trade deal with China, the U.S. will retaliate… hard. “We have a highly integrated market with Canada. The goods can cross across the border during the manufacturing process six times. And we can’t let Canada become an opening that the Chinese pour their cheap goods into the U.S.,” he said.

Trump already put out a message on Truth Social. “If Carney thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken,” Trump posted Saturday.

The White House isn’t just talking either. They’re already reviewing which Canadian goods could get slapped with new penalties. Cars are top of the list.

Scott also said China could get hit with fresh tariffs too if this agreement expands beyond the current scope.

Davos speech sparks tension as new USMCA talks approach

The timing is brutal. Carney’s deal comes just ahead of planned talks to renegotiate the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement this summer. Scott didn’t say how this China move would affect that, but it’s now clear tensions are running hot.

Canada’s trade minister Dominic LeBlanc tried to calm things down Saturday, saying there’s no free trade deal with China in the works. He claimed the Carney-Xi agreement is about ending tariff disputes, not opening the floodgates.

But that hasn’t stopped the criticism. Part of the heat is coming from a speech Carney gave at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He told world leaders to start “naming reality,” quoting Czech dissident Václav Havel, and warning against lies about how the world works.

While Carney didn’t name the U.S. directly, he took clear aim at American tactics, blasting “tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, and supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.”

Scott wasn’t impressed. “I’m not sure what Prime Minister Carney is doing here, other than trying to virtue-signal to his globalist friends at Davos,” he said.

This clash isn’t just about words. Carney has previously tried to cool things down with Trump by removing retaliatory tariffs and apologizing for an anti-tariff ad out of Ontario. But this time, the damage might be harder to walk back.

Both Carney and Trump are attending the same summit this week, but no meeting has been confirmed. Carney is leaving the day Trump arrives.

Either way, Canada’s sudden China shift is now a front-row issue for U.S. trade hawks. And Scott made it clear: if it keeps up, Washington is ready to hit back.