Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says the United States asked Canada to surrender its sovereignty during trade negotiations that his government recently abandoned in dramatic fashion. The reality is exactly the opposite: Washington was asking Canada to do more to protect its own steel industry.
The U.S. reportedly wanted Canada to match the strong measures America has adopted to keep unfairly traded steel out of its market. That isn’t surrendering sovereignty. The U.S. and its allies, including Canada, have worked for years to develop trade policies protecting our countries from nonmarket economies such as China.
The need has rarely been more urgent. Global steel excess capacity reached 640 million metric tons in 2025, according to the Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity. China is directly responsible for nearly 57% of that excess.
China’s steel industry benefits from extensive state support and operates as part of Beijing’s broader industrial strategy. The objective isn’t profitability. It is to dominate global manufacturing by producing enormous volumes of steel and exporting the surplus at prices that market-oriented producers struggle to match.
We’ve seen what happens when Beijing gains control of strategically important supply chains. China has demonstrated its willingness to restrict access to critical materials to advance its geopolitical interests. Allowing the same dependence to develop in steel would threaten economic and national security.
Since President Donald Trump first imposed the Section 232 steel tariffs in 2018, steelmakers have announced or begun roughly $47 billion in projects to expand and modernize domestic production. Imports have fallen sharply, and steel employment is rising in America’s heartland.
These policies have also forced governments to confront global overcapacity. The European Union, for example, is pursuing parallel measures to strengthen its steel industry.
Canada has taken a different path. Ottawa retaliated against the United States for defending its steel industry, but refuses to take meaningful measures against the countries driving the crisis. It is also embracing greater integration with China in critical sectors such as automotive production.
Rather than join the U.S. in building a stronger North American barrier against unfairly traded steel, Ottawa treated the request as an affront to Canadian independence. Meanwhile, Chinese steel and aluminum imports into Canada nearly doubled between 2020 and 2024.
That creates an obvious problem. More than half of Canada’s domestic steel production is exported. If Canada increasingly satisfies domestic demand with artificially cheap foreign metal while exporting its own production, American steelmakers absorb the consequences of Canada’s weaker trade defenses.
The U.S. cannot accept that arrangement.
Canada is a friend, ally, and deeply integrated trading partner. That makes cooperation on steel more important, not less. Canada came to Washington asking America to weaken the Section 232 tariffs that have helped drive the resurgence of U.S. steelmaking. The United States should not jeopardize billions in investment, thousands of American jobs, and a strategic industry. Especially for a country unwilling to match our defenses against unfairly traded steel.
AMERICA’S SANCTIONS ARE NOW CHINA’S HUAWEI SALES PITCH
Carney can call that an infringement on Canadian sovereignty. It is nothing of the sort. America asked Canada to help defend the North American steel market from a global overcapacity crisis fueled by China. Canada should do that whether or not a trade deal is ever signed.
A country that depends on foreign governments for the steel that builds its economy and national defense is not more sovereign. It is less. If Carney truly wants to defend Canadian sovereignty, he should start by defending against excess capacity.
Brandon Farris is Executive Vice President of the Steel Manufacturers Association.