Donald Trump says he hasn’t ‘had a lot of luck’ negotiating trade deal with Canada

With one week left until the deadline for new, steep tariffs, U.S. President Donald Trump now says a trade deal with Canada may not be in reach.

Just before Trump got on a flight to Scotland Friday morning, he told reporters he had not had much luck negotiating with Canada.

This comes days after Prime Minister Mark Carney said Ottawa may not meet the Aug. 1, deadline, and that he’ll only accept a deal that’s best for Canada.

With just one week to go until The White House plans to hit Canada with a 35 per cent tariff, Trump had an update on how negotiations are going.

“We haven’t really had a lot of luck with Canada,” said Trump. “I think Canada could be one where they just pay tariffs, there’s not really a negotiation.”

Trump said there’s a “50-50” chance he will strike a deal with the European Union, and boasted about the recently announced agreement with Japan.

When it came to Canada, he said, “we don’t have a deal with Canada, we haven’t been focused on it.”

“The United States’ negotiators have been focusing more heavily on completing negotiations with Australia, the European Union, with whom the United States does not have a free trade agreement,” said Colin Mang, an economics professor at McMaster University.

“So the Canadian negotiations – not to say that they’ve taken a back seat, but they’ve not been priority number one with the administration, so that’s why we’ve seen it take a little bit longer to reach a deal,” said Mang.

Trump sent a letter to Carney threatening to impose 35 per cent tariffs if Canada doesn’t make a trade deal by Aug. 1.

The White House said those duties would apply only to goods not compliant with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Trade Agreement, which are already subjected to a 25 per cent tariff.

“Right now they’re tariffed at 25 per cent, so it would just be going up another 10 per cent, and again at this point, that’s only about 10 per cent of our exports now – most of our exports are still entering the United States tariff-free,” said Mang.

“So the impact on the economy is going to be fairly small on that point,” said Mang.

Canada is also separately being slapped with Trump’s tariffs on steel, aluminum and automobiles, and will be hit by copper tariffs next month, and economists believe minimizing these duties should be the focus of trade negotiations.

“The fact that there is a deal now with Japan may embolden the administration at this stage in the game,” said Lori Williams, a political science professor at Mount Royal University. “The fact that so many countries have not reached a deal, that the threatened tariffs have changed and been postponed so many times in the last few months, really just means that it’s difficult to predict.”

Earlier this week, Carney said Canada would only accept the best deal for Canadians, if it was available.

The Prime Minister’s Office said they have nothing to add to those comments, following Trump’s latest remarks.

Canada-U.S. trade minister Dominic Leblanc is expected to return to Washington next week for more negotiations.

WATCH MORE: Political analyst discusses what a good trade deal for Canadians might look like