Carney sent them home. The 50 percent tariff is the deal now.

Mark Carney sent his trade team home Friday night. He did it in writing, from Ottawa, minutes before a 50 percent U.S. tariff package was set to hit a slice of Canadian goods. The talks that President Trump had already branded a “DEAL” on Tuesday did not make it to Saturday.

The Prime Minister’s own statement is the record. Carney said last-minute changes in the American terms were “unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.” He ordered Canada’s negotiators back from Washington. He said Canada will match the U.S. tariffs dollar for dollar.”

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told the other story. In a statement reported by Fox Business and NBC News after the walk-off, Greer said Canada “declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week,” and blamed “new demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada.” He said Washington had offered “significant tariff reductions on steel, aluminum, autos and lumber” and “the best treatment of any major exporter” to the U.S. market. This desk has not seen a USTR posting of that Friday-night text. The quotes are Greer’s as carried by those two outlets.

Nobody published the last draft. Trump posted Tuesday that, “subject to the finalization of documents,” the two sides had a deal, and he paused the 50 percent tariffs for three days. Carney’s Friday letter says the American side then moved the goalposts. Greer says Ottawa moved them. Those cannot both be complete. Until the paper is public, treat the “deal” as a social-media claim that did not survive contact with a signature.

The size of the hit is already in dispute. Carney put the U.S. package at “roughly $28 billion of Canadian goods.” USTR, in a July 20 statement when President Trump first invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, described “nearly $20 billion in imports from Canada.” NBC, citing USTR, used the $20 billion figure again Friday. This desk is printing both numbers rather than picking a side.

Greer also said a live fight inside the talks was Canada keeping its own retaliation in place, including provincial bans on American alcohol. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, after Carney’s letter, posted that the prime minister had his “full support for a strong response—tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar.” That is a premier lining up after the walk, not a published concession that unlocked a deal.

Business lobbies on both sides of the river had already warned this would land on prices and payrolls. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said this week higher tariffs would damage both economies. After Carney’s letter, Candace Laing of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce called the collapse “a body blow to North American competitiveness in this self-defeating trade saga.” Those are trade-group statements, not GDP prints.

The larger frame is not a mystery. On July 1 the United States declined to renew the USMCA in its current form. The pact is still in force while Washington bargains. On July 20 Greer said Canada had joined China as one of two countries that retaliated against Trump’s tariff campaign, and that Section 338 was the answer. Carney’s Friday close: “Canada has what the world wants. And we will not allow any nation to determine our future.” That is a political line. The tariff is a tax. Families pay it at the register whether Ottawa or Washington wrote the press release.