Trump admin debunks 'fake' Carney claim that US trade deal was threat to French language rights

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer shut down claims Monday that Washington wants Canada to loosen French-language protections, saying the United States has “no problem” with French while criticizing Canadian policies requiring American companies to fund domestic content. 

Greer made the comments to CNBC as Prime Minister Mark Carney accused American negotiators of viewing the French language in Canada as an “irritant” while stressing that language protections in Quebec are legal rights.

Carney’s comments came after he instructed Canadian negotiators to walk away with no deal with Washington this weekend. New US tariffs on a range of Canadian products took effect over the weekend, affecting roughly 5 percent of Canada’s exports to the United States, with tariffs on automotive and steel to come on January 1.

President Donald Trump has continued to slam Canada, posting Monday that the country had been “ripping off the United States of America for years." Greer said reports that Washington wanted English to receive priority over French were false. “That is not true, I can tell you that's not true,” Greer said during the CNBC interview. “I think that's just, I don't know what that is about.”

Greer said he speaks French and noted that his children speak the language. He said the United States understands Quebec’s desire to preserve French-language content. "No, I mean that was a funny fake story, and I don't think that, I mean, I speak French too, my kids speak French, one of my kids was born in Paris," Greer told CNBC.

“I mean, it's what I said, there are countries like Australia and like Canada, where they go to somebody like Netflix or other streamers, and they say, okay, you make X money, you're going to take 5% of that, and you have to give it to Canadian content producers, or Quebecois content producers, or Australian content producers, and that's what you have to do.”

Greer said Washington’s objection is to what it considers a discriminatory levy on American companies, not the use of French itself. “And we think that's a tax, a discriminatory tax on American companies, but we have no problem with French language, we like it, we think it's great.”