Canada prepares a surrender to the US in a new trade deal

On the 11th June, The Economist magazine published an exclusive on the new trade deal Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was negotiating with President Trump. 24 hours later, the article was removed. Fortunately it was archived before being taken down. Here it is:

https://archive.ph/2025.06.11-194747/https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2025/06/11/carneys-colossal-canada-us-pact

The bombshell part of the article was this:

It would give America a first right of refusal on Canadian minerals

This completely undermines Carney's election manifesto pledge to diversify Canada's economy away from the US.

It also hurts Canada's resource providers.

If you want the best price for your goods, it is helpful to have multiple parties bidding against each other. If you give first refusal to one party, other parties won't waste their time bidding, making the correct assumption they won't get the goods. That results in the goods being sold cheaper than they would have otherwise.

We saw an example of this in NAFTA, where the Americans had first refusal on Canadian oil. As a result, Canadian oil regularly sold for $5 to $10 below the NYMEX price. Over time this added up to hundreds of billions of dollars; the Canadians were robbed.

Trudeau managed to get the first refusal clause removed when he negotiated the USMCA deal with Trump in his first term. He also managed to overcome opposition to build a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific. As a result Canadians can now sell their oil to Asia at the market price.

Reinserting the first refusal clause into a trade deal would be a major setback for the Canadian economy.