Canada welcomes US shift on French language discoverability in trade talks

US trade officials downplay French language dispute, calling claims fabricated.Canada’s top trade negotiator with the United States, Dominic LeBlanc, says he “welcomes” a shift in the US position on “discoverability”, “labelling” and “measures to promote French language and Canadian culture” not being subject to US tariffs.LeBlanc praised the move in a post on Thursday on X and added that Canada is looking “forward to further constructive U.S. clarifications on their other positions, which would create the possibility of a mutually beneficial trade agreement”.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4US inflation holds at 3.7 percent in July, above Fed targetlist 2 of 4Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook denounces Trump’s mortgage fraud claimslist 3 of 4OpenAI says it detected malign activity months before Hugging Face attacklist 4 of 4Israeli settlers targeting Palestinian factories to force workers off landend of listAl Jazeera reached out to the White House for comment, but it pointed to an interview with US Trade Representative Jamison Greer on the Canadian broadcaster CBC in which Greer said French language discoverability on streaming services “is not something where we push hard or condition or red-line”.Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick echoed those comments at a news conference on Thursday outside the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.“Do I care about how the Quebecois speak? I mean, what could matter less to America? We don’t care. So the fact is we never brought those words up. This is manufactured, and that’s why the president put out a [post on Truth Social] saying it was a complete lie, right? It was manufactured,” Lutnick told reporters.The comments come on the heels of tit-for-tat tariffs between Washington and Ottawa.Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on roughly $20bn of US goods ranging from 15 to 50 percent that will go into effect on September 8. Those levies were in response to 50 percent tariffs announced by Washington on Canadian goods as negotiations collapsed over the weekend.