Is Carney rushing a trade deal before the U.S. midterms?

Yeah, the Prime Minister's comments, Roger DeFallo reports that late last week and over the weekend, International Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc was deeply engaged in talks with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and others in the administration.

In fact, LeBlanc canceled the last-minute event in his riding on Friday.

to remain in Ottawa, part of those talks.

And if you go back even further, we've spoken about Chief Trade Negotiator Jenna Charette's comments at a major business event in Toronto, where she talked openly about the broad contours of a deal, including the likelihood that any deal negotiated between the two parties would maintain some degree of tariffs on some degree of Canadian exports.

I think he put this all together.

And yeah, it's a sign that the Carney government may indeed be pre-positioning a possible deal with the Trump administration on or before November 3rd, the midterm elections.

And of course, the question on the minds of everyone, Roger, including no doubt yours, is whether a possible deal looks and feels a lot like the one that we walked away from in August, or has the political calculation on the Trump administration side changed since that Mark Carney, Dominic LeBlanc, Janet Charette can claim that walking away from that deal and kind of playing hard to get has actually secured Canada better outcomes than what were on the table roughly two months ago.

Yeah, well, it would certainly seem like this is the point of maximum leverage as the president contemplates not unserious electoral losses, both at the gubernatorial level, possibly at the Senate, most definitely in the House of Representatives in a lot of these so-called swing states, which also happen to be like Michigan and Maine border states.

So, I mean, Sean, the clock is ticking here.

I mean, we're literally into the midterms next week.

I don't know.

I mean, how are we to think about this? If there is some interest on the part of the US administration on a good news story in those battleground states, I would think it's like the next couple of days.

I mean, the president can always announce something on True Social.

I get that.

Surely, Sean, you've been in a prime minister's office.

There has to be some coordination here.

Our PM would have to be in consultation with the premiers.

There would have to be some kind of internal process.

Maybe the president isn't abiding by those things, but I think north of the border here, I mean, we can't just tweet back at his Truth Social account and say, Yes, Mr.

President, we have a deal.

Yeah, not only are there the logistical questions that you rightly raise that just put a really tight time frame around any possible deal if it's to be reached before the midterms, but there's also the kind of practical political question, Roger.

If Reports are true.

And what is at least partly motivating President Trump and the people around him is trying to solve for these issues such that they don't under or they don't harm candidates in Michigan and Maine.

If a deal isn't done until, you know, the eve of the election.

Right.