Managing Trump (his Tariffs… and everything else): 1)(Updated) Carney says Canada, U.S. were close to a deal when Trump ended trade talks; 2)Trump’s 10% bus tariffs are about to pinch city budgets across North America

1)(Updated) Carney says Canada, U.S. were close to a deal when Trump ended trade talks

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Sarah Ritchie, Oct. 27, 2025

Carney says Canada, U.S. were close to a deal when Trump ended trade talks

Ottawa and Washington were close to a deal when U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly cut off trade talks last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Monday.

Carney said there were “very detailed, very specific, very comprehensive” negotiations about steel, aluminum and energy trade before everything changed on Thursday.

“We stand by the progress that had been made, the government of Canada does, and we are ready, when appropriate, to pick that up,” he said.

Speaking to reporters at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Malaysia, the prime minister said he hasn’t heard from Trump since Thursday.

Trump said he ended the discussions because of an anti-tariff TV ad campaign the Ontario government has been running in U.S. markets. He called the ad, which features former president Ronald Reagan talking about tariffs, dishonest.

Carney spoke with Ontario Premier Doug Ford just before leaving for Malaysia and Ford agreed to pull the ads after the weekend.

Then on Saturday, Trump declared that he would add a 10 per cent tariff on top of existing levies on Canada because the ad was still running.

The two leaders will be at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meetings later this week in South Korea but they do not intend to meet.

Trump, who left Malaysia for Japan on Monday, said he doesn’t want to meet Carney at APEC and won’t be meeting with him “for a while.”

“I’m very happy with the deal we have right now with Canada. We’re going to let it ride,” he told reporters on Air Force 1.

When pressed for details on the additional 10 per cent tariffs, the president said he didn’t know when it would kick in “but I don’t really want to discuss it.”

Carney and Trump appeared to be very cordial during a meeting at the Oval Office earlier this month, with Trump praising the prime minister as a “world-class leader” and saying he thought the Canadian negotiation team would be very happy with the deal.

When asked what he thought had gone wrong in his relationship with Trump, Carney said, “That’s a question for him.”

He did say Canadians should take Trump at his word that the ad campaign was the reason talks broke down. Some White House officials in recent days have said there were actually a series of frustrations with the Canadian negotiators.

Carney did not say whether he thought running the ad was a mistake.

“In any complicated, high-stakes negotiation, you can get unexpected twists and turns and you have to keep your cool during those situations. It doesn’t pay to be upset,” he said.

Carney said negotiations with the U.S. had shifted to focus on trade in specific sectors, rather than the broader economic and security pact he had been pitching during the spring and summer.

“The U.S. was less interested in the security element of the partnership, which is their decision,” he said.

Carney also said the work he’s been doing at the ASEAN summit to deepen partnerships with countries in the fast-growing region of Southeast Asia is part of the contingency plan his government has developed in light of Trump’s trade war.

“Candidly, Canada has not focused on (those) relationships to the same extent as we should have in any trading environment with the United States, let alone a situation where they’re changing their trade policy,” he said.

The summit wrapped on Monday. Carney is headed to Singapore on Tuesday for a series of meetings with business leaders and a bilateral discussion with his counterpart, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong.

2)Trump’s 10% bus tariffs are about to pinch city budgets across North America

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Kyle Duggan, Oct. 30, 2025.

A transit advocacy group is warning new U.S. tariffs on buses coming into effect this weekend are going to upend the budgets of cities across North America — and eventually residents and riders.

Property taxes, transit fares, parking fees and maybe even congestion charges could be in play.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs package on heavy and medium-sized trucks — which he announced earlier this month, citing national security concerns — includes a 10 per cent duty on buses.

Like the Canadian auto sector, the bus manufacturing industry is highly integrated between the two countries, with parts crossing the border multiple times.

“If every mayor in North America is not peeing themselves right now, they really should be,” said Josipa Petrunic, CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Research & Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC).

Although it will take a while for the costs to filter down to Canadians, she said, cities desperate to source enough buses for their fleets will find themselves able to purchase even fewer than they’d hoped as the prices of vehicles and parts rise, and as production runs shrink.

There’s no wiggle room, no exceptions for compliance with trade agreements or Buy America policies, and no carve-outs, as there are with the new truck tariffs.

“Overnight, mayors just woke up and every bus that they have in the pipeline — even if they’ve already signed the contract — just got some percentage more expensive, up to 10 per cent,” Petrunic said.

She said a hybrid bus costs roughly $900,000, while an electric bus can easily run to $1.3 million.

Petrunic is urging the government not to let the bus manufacturing industry get sidelined during trade negotiations, and to take steps to help the industry.

Rebecca Bligh, president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, said she is “deeply concerned” about the upcoming bus tariffs. She warned they will “directly affect Canadians by driving up the cost of public transit” and “threaten thousands” of manufacturing jobs.

“Higher costs mean fewer new buses, slower progress toward cleaner fleets, and the risk of service cuts or fare hikes,” she said in a statement to The Canadian Press.

“For communities already facing rising infrastructure costs, this adds pressure at a time when reliable, accessible transit is more important than ever.”

Canada’s bus manufacturing industry employs upward of 25,000 people and has already been hit by Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs.

There are three major manufacturers of buses in North America: New Flyer — which operates plants in Winnipeg and owns a major share of the market — Nova Bus in Saint-Eustache, Que. and Gillig, which is located in San Francisco’s East Bay region in California.

“NFI is carefully reviewing the details of the recently announced new tariffs on buses and motor coaches entering the U.S. market and assessing its implications,” said a statement sent by Melissa Schnee of New Flyer, which is owned by NFI Group.