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OTTAWA — The Liberal government’s push to diversify trade won’t change direction following the U.S. midterm elections which will give control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats, Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Wednesday.
LeBlanc said recent talks with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration have been productive and he looks forward to speaking more with his American counterparts in the coming days.
While LeBlanc told reporters on Parliament Hill that Tuesday night’s election results were interesting, he refused to interpret them and said the new Congress won’t change the federal government’s trade agenda.
“What the new Congress might decide to do when they’re seated two months from now is an interesting discussion at a faculty club luncheon at Mount Allison University today,” LeBlanc said.
“That’s not going to change the work that we have to do in the next two weeks. The American Congress will act in the interests of the American Congress. Our work will be focused on what we can do here at home.”
Trump has more than two years remaining in his term, but is expected to face a far rougher ride domestically when the Democrats take control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. What it means for his foreign policy is still up for debate.
Trump’s tariffs were a factor in races in battleground states such as Maine and Michigan, where unsuccessful Republican candidates spoke out against the president’s attacks on Canada.
U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, who has insisted Canada and the United States are not in a trade war, recently warned Canada not to attempt to to influence U.S. elections.
The U.S. embassy cited past comments by Industry Minister Mélanie Joly when it argued last month that Ottawa was looking to influence the midterms’ outcome.
At a news conference on Aug. 25, Joly said Canada would use retaliatory tariffs to exert “political pressure” on key U.S. states.
“We’re also targeting products that will target states in the U.S., and so we’re being wise and strategic to put political pressure,” Joly said at the time.
But LeBlanc insisted on Wednesday Ottawa’s counter-tariffs were not designed to pressure to Republicans in battleground states.
“The reasons we put in counter-tariffs were to protect Canadian industries and not create an unfair playing field, where suddenly an export to the United States of a particular product was facing a huge, in some cases prohibitive, tariff and the same product would come in tariff-free to the Canadian market,” LeBlanc said.
“How they were interpreted by American voters is up to Americans to discuss.”
Formal trade talks have been stalled since Canada walked away from negotiations in Washington in August. Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Tuesday official trade discussions with the United States had been taking place in recent days.
Carney returned to Ottawa in the early morning hours of Wednesday after travelling to Antigua and Barbuda for a meeting of Commonwealth leaders.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Wednesday the midterms outcome clearly “demonstrates that Americans hate tariffs.”
“A tariff on Canada is a tax on Americans,” Poilievre told reporters outside the Parliament buildings.
“What (Carney’s) got to do is take advantage of the immense leverage that Canada has had all along with the goodwill of the American people to get tariff-free trade with our biggest market in the world.”
The Conservative leader said that he intends to travel back to the United States soon to advocate for tariff-free trade, but did not provide any specific dates.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2026.
David Baxter and Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press
