U.S. Vice-President JD Vance on Monday said a “Freudian slip” caused him to accidentally call Canada a U.S. state while lambasting the country’s trade and defence policies in the wake of failed negotiations with the U.S.
Vance, speaking at a political event in Maine, also claimed those talks were still ongoing despite Prime Minister Mark Carney pulling Canada out of the negotiations late last week.
While Carney reiterated Monday that Canada will only return to the negotiating table when the U.S. starts acting fairly and respects Canada’s sovereignty, Vance suggested it was actually Canada that has been acting unfairly, both in its longstanding trade policies and in the recent talks.
“We have to remember Canada is a state — sorry, Freudian slip,” Vance said, drawing laughter from the crowd at a manufacturing facility in Brewer, Maine. “That was actually an accident.
“Canada is a country that has underinvested in its military, that quite literally would get invaded by a foreign country were it not for the umbrella of protection provided by the United States of America. And so how does Canada actually respond to that — by treating the people of Maine fairly? No, they apply ridiculous tariffs and other non-tariff duties on Maine products coming into Canada. And they don’t expect Maine or anybody else to fight back? We’re sick of that. We’re actually going to fight back against unfair trade practices, whether it’s coming from China or Canada.”
The moment came amid increasingly disparaging rhetoric from the Trump administration over Canada’s sovereignty after the negotiations fell apart.
Over the weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump posted on social media that Canada “wants the benefits of being a State, without being one,” and said Monday it would “no longer” receive that treatment while threatening increased tariffs on Canadian autos and auto parts.
Trump later on Monday called Carney “Governor,” a term he often used for former prime minister Justin Trudeau but had mostly dropped after Carney came to power and the two leaders sought a friendlier relationship.
Vance on Monday went on to say the U.S. wants to “fix” Canada’s supply management system for dairy, which sets quotas for tariff-free imports, and accused Canada of being a “backdoor” for Chinese goods to enter the North American market while bypassing U.S. tariffs on China.
“Here’s what happened with the most recent round of negotiations — they’re still ongoing, and I want to be respectful of the process, but we know that Canada allows itself to be used as a backdoor for Chinese goods,” Vance said.
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“They treat Chinese goods more fairly than they do the goods that come from the people of Maine. It’s insanity, and what we said to Canada is, ‘Stop it. Apply a basic principle of fairness to the trade that you’re doing between North Dakota and Canada, between Maine and Canada.’”
He continued: “What happened at the very end is they came in with a bunch of unreasonable, last-minute demands. I frankly thought we had a deal. I think that we should have a deal, but I think that we need to send a message loud and clear to the prime minister of Canada: stop taking advantage of the people of Maine, stop taking advantage of America. It’s over. We expect fairness in our trade policy.”
Carney and other Canadian officials have said it was actually the Americans that began making last-minute demands on Canada — including restrictions on which countries Canada could make trade deals with — prompting Carney to order negotiators back to Ottawa.
The prime minister told reporters in Levis, Que., on Monday that Canada ultimately “could not accept what the U.S. had offered, nor could we give what they asked.”
“Look, when the Americans go to the negotiating table first with the right attitude towards our industries and in true partnership, of course we’ll come to the negotiating table,” he said.
“But an attitude at the negotiating table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States, that Canadian industry is going to be disadvantaged relative to American industry, that we’re going to set up terms so that over time, Canadian industry is going to face constant headwinds, that’s not something that we’re going to accept.”
Vance’s message in Maine was a contrast with that of the state’s senior Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican running for re-election in November who has called Trump’s new 50 per cent tariffs on Canada “a mistake.”
“The Administration must consider the negative impact tariffs would have on Maine businesses, communities, and families and work to reach a fair agreement with our Canadian neighbors,” she wrote on social media Saturday.
Vance did not directly address Collins’ comments Monday but called her “the most independent member of the United States Senate” who sometimes makes his job as president of the Senate “a little bit harder.”
Other Trump administration officials have claimed Canada walked away from a good deal with the U.S.
“They were offered quite a good deal last week, and they chose to reject it,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters in Washington on Monday, before going on to accuse Carney of playing politics.
“Unfortunately, Prime Minister Carney rose to power on an anti-American, anti-Trump platform — I believe he was more than 20 points behind (before the 2025 federal election) — and he seems to have gone back to his old playbook,” Bessent continued.
“I think one has to ask oneself, is he trying to benefit himself, the Liberal party, or the Canadian people?”
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Monday also accused Canada of making unreasonable demands during an interview with CNBC on Monday.
“Simply, they wanted more,” he said. “I don’t know if it was political for them, it certainly doesn’t make economic sense, but perhaps for political reasons (because) they have some byelections coming up. I don’t know. But they came in and they wanted more and we weren’t prepared to do that.
“The reality is, for a long time, we told the Canadians, ‘Here are some things where we think we can deliver you the best deal in the world, where you’ll preferential access over every other country into the United States and you will be the most preferred partner.’ And they said, ‘Well we actually need a better situation than that,’ and walked away.”
Over the weekend, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted Canada would return to the negotiating table quickly while further disparaging the country.
“Canada gets the benefit of trading with the U.S. way more than the U.S. gets the benefit of trading with Canada,” he told Fox News Sunday.
“It’s a country that doesn’t have a military. It’s a country that has a single-payer health-care system that’s failing. They have record high euthanasia rates. And so to think that they’re gonna go to war with Donald Trump and actually win that war with the U.S., I think it’s foolish on their part.”
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