The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Friday blasted Canada for its tough trade negotiating strategy. A New York Times dispatch to The Globe reports that Mr. Lutnick dismissed a former trade official's suggestion to negotiate the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement slowly, amid mounting political pressure on the Trump administration, as "the worst strategy I ever heard." Mr. Lutnick said the trade deal over all was "a bad industrial policy that harmed America," which is the literal opposite of how Mr. Trump characterized the deal at the outset. A White House spokesman Kush Desai said that Mr. Lutnick was "being misquoted." He added, "Secretary Lutnick was correctly pointing out how Canada, along with many other 'allies,' has been taking advantage of the American economy and people for decades." Mr. Lutnick projected that U.S. economic growth would hit 6 per cent. Data released in March, however, showed the economy grew 0.7 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, and 2.1 per cent in 2025 overall. Mr. Lutnick also derided the recent outreach by Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada to China as "nuts," saying the U.S. was the "consumer of the world."