The U.S. Treasury Secretary spent Monday morning explaining why Canada can't win a trade war, and reached for West Edmonton Mall to make the point.
Scott Bessent was on CNBC's Squawk on the Street, speaking from Asheville, North Carolina, where a G20 finance ministers meeting was underway. Host Sara Eisen asked whether the two countries are now in a tit-for-tat trade war.
"Well, I don't think you can be in a tit for tat with someone who's 13 times larger than you are," Bessent said.
Eisen noted that Canada says it's doing okay.
"What else are they going to say?" he replied. "Look, I think this is very unfortunate that Prime Minister Carney has turned this into a political shouting match."
Then came the line that made it a story in Edmonton.
"I mean, we're not at war with Canada. How are we going to be at war with Canada? What, are they going to take their two submarines from the Edmonton Mall and sic them on us?"
The rest of what he said
Bessent went after the Prime Minister directly.
"He came to power on an anti-American, anti-Trump agenda. He was 20 points behind in the polls. And then he started this."
"It's unfortunate that he's not doing what's best for the Canadian people. He's doing what is best for the Liberal Party, what's best for Mark Carney, and in the long run, the Canadian people are going to see through that."
He added that Canada "were offered the best trade deal of anyone on the globe and he walked away from it at the last moment."
Where the trade fight actually stands
On August 22, the United States imposed 50 per cent tariffs on roughly $28 billion in Canadian goods, including beer, cheese and electronics, on top of existing duties on aluminum, lumber, vehicles and steel.
Ottawa announced dollar-for-dollar counter-tariffs on about 700 American products, taking effect September 8.
Carney said on August 23 that Canada had been attacked. "You're at war when you get attacked," he said. "We got attacked."
Canada's chief trade negotiator Janice Charette has said the auto industry was raised consistently through the negotiations.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been publicly critical of the counter-tariffs and has urged Ottawa to use the days before September 8 to restart talks.
About those submarines
There were four of them, not two. And they were cut up for scrap 14 years ago.
West Edmonton Mall ran submarines through its indoor lake as part of the Deep Sea Adventure attraction. The ride closed in 2005. The submarines were broken up for scrap in 2012.
So the fleet Bessent invoked has been out of service for 21 years and out of existence for 14, and the mall's fleet was twice the size he claimed.
Deep Sea Adventure was a genuinely strange attraction
The submarines weren't a novelty bolted onto a mall. They were part of what made the mall famous.
The lake and its four submarines ran passengers on an underwater tour past coral displays and sunken statuary, with a full-scale replica of the Santa Maria moored above them.
That was the whole pitch. A shopping centre in Alberta could contain things that had no business being in a shopping centre. A wave pool. An indoor roller coaster. A hotel with themed rooms. And a submarine fleet.
Tourists came for exactly that, and for two decades the subs were on every postcard and in every school trip itinerary.
After the ride closed, the submarines sat for years before being scrapped. The lake stayed, and eventually became home to the mall's sea lions.
Which is why the line lands oddly here. Bessent was reaching for something absurd and picked a thing the city was proud of.
What happens next
The counter-tariffs land September 8. Nothing about an exchange of insults changes that date.
Whether talks resume before then is the question that actually matters.
Sources
Scott Bessent, interview with Sara Eisen on CNBC's Squawk on the Street, August 31, 2026
Department of Finance Canada, counter-tariff announcement, August 25, 2026
West Edmonton Mall submarine closure and scrapping details, and comments from Mark Carney and Janice Charette, as reported by CBC News.
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