US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that his administration has the “concept” of a new trade deal with Canada while Prime Minister Mark Carney said the two leaders had a good conversation on the future of trade between their countries.
“I spoke to him again yesterday, and we have the concept of a deal that’s going to be great for our farmers, great for our country, and we’ll be fine for that,” Trump told reporters in Dubuque, Iowa.
Carney earlier on Sunday posted on social media that their exchange “builds on recent constructive discussions on the outlines of a mutually beneficial trade deal” that would create jobs, improve affordability, and fully respect Canada’s languages, culture, and sovereignty.
“Our teams will now be working in the coming weeks to deliver that outcome,” Carney wrote on X.
Canada and the United States have slapped billions of dollars in tariffs on each other in recent months. The imposition of tariffs on Canada has emerged as an issue in some northern US border states like Michigan and Maine before US midterm elections on Tuesday.
Trump said last week that a trade deal with Canada was coming soon, but Ottawa had previously reported limited progress in trade talks, despite efforts to ease tariffs on steel and autos.
Trump said the scope of an agreement would include the Keystone XL pipeline project that he supports, though it was not immediately clear how the project would be revived. Former President Joe Biden in 2021 revoked a key permit for the project, which was a private sector initiative.
“They’re going to build the Keystone Pipeline,” Trump said on Sunday. “They’re going to pay for it. … We’re going to give them the route, and it’s largely been determined.”
A spokesperson for Dominic LeBlanc, Canada’s minister responsible for trade with the US, had no further comment on Sunday evening beyond Carney’s remarks.
Trump said in August that the pipeline “may be awoken from the grave.” The proposed pipeline would have carried 830,000 barrels per day of oil from the oil sands of northern Alberta to the major US storage hub at Cushing, Oklahoma, and then on to Gulf Coast refineries.
Canada, the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter, sends more than 90% of its crude oil production to the U.S.
The company behind Keystone XL, Canada’s TC Energy, lost billions when the pipeline was canceled. It later spun off its crude pipelines business into a new entity, South Bow, which has proposed a new pipeline project called Prairie Connector, in partnership with U.S. company Bridger Pipeline.
The 550,000-barrel-per-day project would run from Alberta to Wyoming and would use some of the Keystone XL pipe that had been installed on the Canadian side of the border before that project was canceled. South Bow has said it will decide whether or not to go ahead with Prairie Connector in 2027.
South Bow was not immediately available for comment. A spokesperson for Canadian Energy Minister Tim Hodgson declined comment.
(Reporting By Allison Lampert in Montreal and Gram Slattery in Dubuque, Iowa; Editing by Will Dunham, Deepa Babington, Sergio Non and Chizu Nomiyama)