The German list this morning is looking at the same trade breakdown as several other countries, but from the side that imposed it. Der Spiegel's most-read piece is not about Canada's response — it is about American companies asking Washington to go back to the table.
The Business Roundtable, the lobby group of around 200 large US corporate chiefs, called on both governments to resume talks, warning that the new tariffs threaten to push up costs for American companies and that consumers would be hit too. Democratic legislators and the governors of Minnesota, New York and Washington state — all bordering Canada — attacked the policy directly. New York's Kathy Hochul wrote on X that needlessly picking fights with allies while raising prices at home is Trump's economic policy in a sentence.
Richard Fontaine, who heads the Center for a New American Security, wrote that if Ottawa matches the tariffs and Trump escalates again, both sides fall into a costly spiral of retaliation, and that the two countries are already in a trade war. He added a reading of why Canada is behaving as it is: the government there has concluded that giving ground to this administration only produces further demands. He named Europe as the example of what that looks like.
Die Zeit carries the part Der Spiegel leaves out, which is the president's own answer. Trump wrote that Canada wants the advantages of a state without being one — he has repeatedly said Canada should become the fifty-first — and that Canada has imposed massive tariffs on American agriculture for years, which must now stop.
On the substance the two German papers agree, and their account differs from the ones we read this morning in London. Both say Carney's counter-measures, from 8 September, will concentrate on steel, dairy products, agricultural equipment and electrical appliances. That is a third version of the list. Set the four accounts side by side and only steel and dairy appear in all of them, which is consistent with Carney saying the detail is still to come.
The rest is the account already on the board: talks collapsed just before the deadline, the United States put 50 percent duties on a range of Canadian goods including wine, hockey sticks, furniture and dairy, Carney said the Americans demanded last-minute changes that would have limited Canada's freedom to sign trade deals elsewhere, and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer said Canada walked away from terms already agreed — after being offered, he says, tariff cuts on steel, cars, timber and aluminium. Greer says no new talks are scheduled. Asked whether the two countries are in a trade war, Carney said you are at war when you are attacked, and they were attacked. Der Spiegel cites a New York Times poll putting 56 percent of Canadians against further trade concessions.
Why it is on the board
Top of Der Spiegel's most-read list when we collected, with Die Zeit carrying the same event at ninth.
What stands out in the German lens is not this story on its own. Of the twelve most-read items across the three German newsrooms we can see, **seven are about the United States** — this dispute twice, a profile of a Trump aide, a piece on America's debt, Kenneth Rogoff on signs of panic in the administration, the beef import row, and the effect of Trump's threats on Iceland. The German-domestic items sit below them.
확인: Der Spiegel · Die Zeit