Donald Trump said his administration has the "concept" of a new trade deal with Canada that would include reviving the Keystone XL pipeline, and Mark Carney confirmed that the teams will work in the coming weeks.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that his administration has the "concept" of a new trade deal with Canada that would include reviving the Keystone XL pipeline, while Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called the dialogue on the future of trade between the two countries constructive. "I spoke to him again yesterday and we have the concept of a deal that will be great for our farmers, great for our country, and we will be fine with that," Trump told reporters in Dubuque, Iowa. On the scope of the eventual pact, the president said: "They are going to build the Keystone pipeline. They are going to pay for it. We will give them the route, which is largely already determined."
Carney said earlier on Sunday on the social media platform X that his exchange with Trump "builds on the recent constructive conversations on the foundations 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," he wrote.
Trade talks between Canada and the United States had broken down this summer, when Washington imposed 50% tariffs on a wide range of Canadian products such as dairy, honey and alcohol —some of which were later banned entirely— and Canada responded with its own tariffs. Both countries have imposed billions of dollars in tariffs on each other in recent months, and the issue has become a factor in northern U.S. border states such as Michigan and Maine ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections. Trump had said last week that a trade deal with Canada would come soon, although Ottawa had reported limited progress in the talks despite efforts to ease tariffs on steel and autos.
The Keystone XL pipeline, whose key permit was revoked in 2021 by then-President Joe Biden, would have carried 830,000 barrels per day of crude from the oil sands of northern Alberta to the storage hub at Cushing, Oklahoma, and from there on to Gulf Coast refineries. Trump had already said in August that the project "may be awoken from the grave." Canada, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter, sends more than 90% of its crude production to the United States.
The Canadian company TC Energy, responsible for Keystone XL, lost billions when the project was canceled and later spun off its crude oil pipeline business into a new company, South Bow, which together with U.S.-based Bridger Pipeline proposed the Prairie Connector project. That 550,000-barrel-per-day pipeline would run from Alberta to Wyoming and would use part of the Keystone XL pipe already installed on the Canadian side; South Bow will decide in 2027 whether to move forward. A spokesperson for Canadian minister Dominic LeBlanc offered no further comment beyond Carney's remarks, South Bow was not immediately available and a spokesperson for Energy Minister Tim Hodgson declined to comment.
