标签： North America

As the mandatory July 1 review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) draws near, trade tensions between Canada and the United States have escalated sharply, centered on retaliatory Canadian provincial bans on U.S. alcohol imports imposed in response to sweeping Trump-era tariffs. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has outlined a clear negotiating position: Ottawa is ready to begin detailed trade discussions with Washington immediately, but it will not rush an unfavorable deal and is prepared to wait for the right conditions if necessary.

The current standoff traces back to 2025, when former U.S. President Donald Trump implemented new tariffs on key Canadian export sectors including steel, aluminum, automobiles and agricultural goods, a measure he claimed would protect American manufacturing and create U.S. jobs. In response, multiple Canadian provinces – led by Ontario, home to the world’s largest single alcohol purchaser, the Ontario Liquor Control Board – pulled all U.S.-produced alcoholic beverages from store shelves. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has remained unwavering in this policy, confirming that U.S. liquor will not return to shelves until the targeted tariffs are fully lifted.

Carney confirmed Thursday that the reversal of provincial alcohol bans could happen rapidly once progress is made on resolving the core tariff dispute, telling reporters, “Issues such as decisions on which alcohol to put on the shelves – we can make progress very quickly on that with progress in other areas.” He emphasized that the Trump administration’s tariffs violate the terms of the existing USMCA free trade framework, and pushed back against U.S. demands for unilateral concessions, noting “We’re not sitting here taking notes and taking instruction from the U.S.”

In recent days, senior U.S. officials have ramped up pressure on Canada over the alcohol ban. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called the restriction “disrespectful” Wednesday, while U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer threatened consequences if the issue is not resolved. Lutnick also dismissed Canada’s cautious, wait-and-see negotiating approach as “the worst strategy I’ve ever heard,” pointing to the vast size discrepancy between the U.S. and Canadian economies.

Ford, speaking to CNN Thursday, countered that the U.S. is already suffering steep economic losses from the dispute, noting that Canadian consumer boycotts of U.S. goods and reduced cross-border travel are costing the American economy “tens of billions of dollars.” “This can come to a quick end, everyone can thrive and prosper,” Ford said, if Washington agrees to roll back the tariffs.

Under Canadian law, liquor regulation falls under provincial rather than federal jurisdiction, meaning provincial leaders hold final authority over whether to restore U.S. alcohol sales. Candace Laing, newly appointed to Carney’s Canada-U.S. trade advisory committee and president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, confirmed that Canada is open to using the alcohol issue as negotiating leverage to secure tariff rollbacks, but will not make unilateral concessions outside of a balanced reciprocal agreement. “Canada is not going to give any concessions that aren’t in the context of a real negotiation,” Laing said.

Many policy analysts argue that Canada’s negotiating position has strengthened considerably in recent months. Fen Hampson, a Carleton University international affairs professor and co-chair of the institution’s Canada-U.S. relations expert group, noted that Trump’s domestic political standing has eroded amid widespread public opposition to the U.S.-Israel military campaign in Iran, a factor that could shift control of Congress in upcoming midterm elections. At the same time, Carney has consolidated power, with recent special elections and parliamentary defections granting his government a stable majority in Parliament.

Hampson argued that Canada’s willingness to wait is a deliberate, strategic choice that gives Ottawa a “last mover advantage,” allowing Canadian negotiators to see what terms Trump secures with Mexico and other trading partners before finalizing any agreement. He added that Canada also holds key structural advantages, as it supplies the U.S. with critical goods including energy, base metals and critical minerals that American industry depends on. “The Canadians are very smart here,” Hampson said. “They’re ragging the puck, they’re running the clock down.”

Washington has identified a handful of ongoing trade irritants with Canada, including the alcohol ban and access to Canada’s protected dairy market, that it hopes to address during the upcoming USMCA review negotiations, which must conclude by July 1 under the terms of the existing agreement.

The internal watchdog of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has officially launched a formal investigation into whether the agency has met its legal obligations under a congressional mandate to declassify and release documents tied to the controversial Jeffrey Epstein case. The move from the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General comes as bipartisan lawmakers have repeatedly slammed the agency for its slow, inconsistent rollout of records, with millions of documents still locked away from public view more than five months after the law took effect.

In an official statement released Thursday, the inspector general’s office outlined that the probe will center on three core areas of scrutiny: how DOJ staff identify, collect, and turn over records that fall under the scope of the transparency law; whether the department’s internal rules and processes for redacting sensitive information and withholding documents align with the legal requirements set by Congress; and the agency’s overall adherence to the law’s timeline. The statement also noted that if unaddressed issues emerge during the audit, investigators will expand their review to cover those emerging concerns.

The legal mandate at the center of this controversy, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, was signed into law by President Donald Trump in November 2025. Notably, Trump initially lobbied Congress to reject the bill before ultimately signing it after it passed with bipartisan support. The law requires the DOJ to release every existing document related to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier convicted of sex offenses, and his convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, within 30 days of the law’s enactment.

Since the law took effect, the DOJ has released records in staggered, intermittent batches to its public online database. Officials confirm they have published more than three million files to date, but a recent analysis by CBS News, the BBC’s U.S. partner, found that roughly 300,000 of those files were later pulled offline following privacy complaints from Epstein’s survivors, leaving roughly 2.7 million records publicly available. Back in January, a senior DOJ official disclosed that the federal government holds an estimated six million total documents tied to the case, explaining that many records will remain sealed permanently to protect survivors’ personal identifying information or to preserve the integrity of ongoing active investigations.

That explanation has done little to ease mounting public and congressional frustration. Critics have openly accused the DOJ of deliberately dragging its feet to conceal connections between Epstein and powerful political and celebrity figures, a claim the department has repeatedly denied. Just last month, the DOJ was forced to correct a major oversight when it released previously withheld interview summaries from a woman who had made unsubstantiated sexual assault claims against President Trump. The agency claimed the documents had been kept from public view by accident. Trump, whose name appears thousands of times throughout the released files, including in personal emails and correspondence written by Epstein, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing connected to the case.

The push for an independent inspector general review has long been led by two high-profile bipartisan lawmakers who spearheaded the push for the original transparency law: Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna and Republican Congressman Thomas Massie. In an interview with BBC Newsnight last month, Massie made clear he remained deeply unsatisfied with the DOJ’s handling of the file release, and called for greater accountability. “Men need to be perp-walked in handcuffs to the jail, and until we see that here in this country… we don’t have a system of justice that’s working,” Massie told the program.

In a brief but revealing five-minute phone interaction, former United States President Donald Trump fielded questions from journalist Sarah Smith on a trio of pressing international topics, offering quick insights into his perspectives on key transatlantic and Middle Eastern issues. The discussion opened with Smith querying Trump about the upcoming official visit of Britain’s King Charles III to the United States, a diplomatic engagement that carries significant weight for the long-standing partnership between the two nations. Moving beyond the scheduled royal trip, the conversation turned to the current state of what has long been termed the “special relationship” between Washington and London, a bond that has weathered shifting political landscapes and changing administrations on both sides of the Atlantic. The third and most geographically distant topic centered on the ongoing conflict involving Iran, a decades-long source of regional instability and a top foreign policy priority for successive U.S. administrations. While the full details of Trump’s responses were not laid out in the initial briefing, the short call touched on three of the most consequential threads in modern U.S. foreign policy, highlighting how these issues remain central to political discourse even outside of an active presidential term.

In an exclusive phone interview with the BBC that was first reported by Reuters, U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed confidence that next week’s landmark four-day state visit by King Charles III and Queen Camilla will go a long way toward mending any recent strains in the bilateral relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.

When asked directly if the high-profile royal trip could help reset transatlantic ties, Trump offered an unreservedly positive response. “Absolutely. He’s fantastic. He’s a fantastic man. Absolutely the answer is yes,” the president told reporters, noting that he has built a long-standing personal rapport with the British monarch over many years. Calling Charles a brave and outstanding leader, Trump emphasized that the visit would without a doubt deliver positive outcomes for both nations.

The royal tour is scheduled to kick off this coming Monday, with the King and Queen set to hold a private audience with President Trump at the White House shortly after their arrival in Washington D.C. Beyond the bilateral meeting, King Charles will also deliver a historic address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, a rare honor reserved for visiting heads of state and global leaders. After wrapping up two days of engagements in the U.S. capital, the royal couple will travel onward to New York, Virginia, and Bermuda before returning to the United Kingdom at the end of the trip. According to the UK Foreign Office, the visit is timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, and is designed to celebrate the deep, long-standing partnership between the two countries rooted in shared history, mutual prosperity, and collective security.

Beyond the royal visit, Trump also opened up about his tense relationship with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the interview, conducted on Thursday. The two leaders have publicly clashed in recent weeks over multiple policy issues, most notably the ongoing conflict in Iran. Starmer has also faced growing domestic political pressure after his controversial appointment of Lord Mandelson as the new UK ambassador to the United States. Earlier this week, Trump took to his social platform Truth Social to slam the pick as “a really bad pick”, but added that Starmer still had “plenty of time to recover” his standing with the White House.

Clarifying that comment during the BBC interview, Trump outlined the conditions under which he believes the UK prime minister can repair relations: Starmer would need to open up further North Sea oil and gas extraction for development – a policy Trump has repeatedly pushed for – and enact much stricter immigration controls, which Trump argued are currently lacking. “If he opened the North Sea and if his immigration policies became strong, which right now they’re not, he can recover, but if he doesn’t, I don’t think he has a chance,” Trump said.

The president also addressed ongoing tensions over the Iran war, where he has openly criticized the UK and other U.S. allies for their limited level of military support. Starmer has repeatedly ruled out deploying UK troops to avoid expanding the conflict into a wider regional war. When asked why he had pushed allies to join the conflict, Trump pushed back on the idea that the U.S. needed additional military backing. “I didn’t need them at all but they should’ve been there. I didn’t need them, obviously,” he said. “We’ve wiped Iran’s military out. I didn’t need anybody. I wanted to see whether or not they would be involved,” Trump added, framing his repeated calls for allied support as “more of a test” of alliance commitments.

Finally, Trump addressed widespread international backlash over his controversial threat earlier this month, when he warned that “a whole civilisation will die tonight” unless Iran agreed to a negotiated settlement. The comment drew widespread global condemnation, including public criticism from the Pope and the United Nations Secretary-General, with many observers speculating the comment referred to a potential nuclear strike. When asked if the threat was referencing nuclear weapons, Trump did not directly answer, instead arguing that his hardline rhetoric was yielding results. “The other side is dying to make a deal. So whatever I’m saying or whatever I’m doing, it seems to be working very well,” he concluded.