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“We are very unhappy with the negotiations and the negotiating style of Canada. We don’t like their representative very much,” Trump said during a wide-ranging news conference.

Some analysts believe Canada has made missteps that needlessly antagonized the Oval Office’s mercurial occupant and his negotiators, others that the tension is a natural byproduct of prolonged trade negotiations.

Regardless, there appears now to be a “breakdown in trust” at the talks, said Dan Ujczo, a trade lawyer with the firm Dickinson-Wright who is regularly briefed on the process. He points to various factors, including long-simmering tensions between both countries’ professional negotiators that predate Freeland, and Canada’s challenges of the States at the World Trade Organization.

“We have heard from multiple officials in the U.S. administration that there is a concern ‘Canada has moved the goal posts,’ ” Ujczo said. “On the Canadian side, we are hearing the exact same phrase.”

“Bad feelings and no trust equals no deal,” he added.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Mexico are widely expected to release the text of their bilateral trade deal Friday, ahead of an Oct. 1 deadline. Talks could still resume over the next few days, though, to try to resolve differences with Canada and bring it into the accord by month’s end, analysts said.

Word of enmity between Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative, and Freeland first surfaced in the summer, as the U.S. began what turned out to be a five-week run of talks with Mexico that excluded Canada.