Why the U.S. sees Quebec’s French

After Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from a Canada-U.S. trade deal that Donald Trump had said was close, the protection of the French language and culture emerged as one reason.

Specifically, Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette said Washington wanted concessions on Quebec’s rules for appliances and instruction manuals, as well as its law promoting French-language cultural content.

“A red line,” she quipped Saturday.

“Our culture, our language, is central to our identity, and it is important to exclude that from the negotiating table,” Fréchette said.

Quebec’s recent legislation allows it to regulate how much French-language content digital platforms offer and how prominently it appears. But for U.S. companies, complying with such rules can add to the cost of doing business in the province.

A U.S. company selling a dishwasher in Quebec may need French packaging, controls, warranties and instruction manuals. Even part of its trademark may need to be translated. Streaming platforms face different demands.

There are two Quebec laws in the fray here.

The first is Bill 96, the province’s sweeping overhaul of the Charter of the French Language, which was adopted in 2022.

Bill 96 strengthened French-language requirements for products sold in Quebec, ensuring French appears on packaging and in documents supplied with products, including instructions, warranties and owner’s manuals.

Rules introduced in June 2025 also require generic or descriptive words in some non-French trademarks to be translated.

For U.S. manufacturers, that can mean producing separate packaging, manuals and software for Quebec, a export market for the U.S worth about $21 billion a year, according to Statistics Canada.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the federal agency responsible for U.S. trade policy, singled out Bill 96 in its annual report on barriers facing U.S. exporters, stating U.S. businesses were concerned about the effect on their trademarks. U.S. officials also raised the law at the World Trade Organization in 2024.

The second law is Bill 109, which extends the dispute from physical products to streaming platforms, televisions and connected devices.

Passed last December, the law requires covered companies to ensure their interfaces can be easily configured in French and allows Quebec to set quotas for French-language content.

Quebec has yet to publish regulations setting the quotas or defining the rules for companies.

In March, the U.S. Trade Representative also listed Bill 109 as a potential trade barrier. Its report said the law could impose separate provincial investment and discoverability requirements on streaming services and device manufacturers, with possible implications for CUSMA.

Netflix, Spotify, Apple and YouTube — together worth about US$9.2 trillion — were among the companies that submitted briefs opposing the law.

The Digital Media Association, whose members include Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube, argued the rules could interfere with listeners’ choices.

It also pointed to a practical problem regarding how global music databases do not consistently identify songs by language or nationality, making French-language quotas difficult to apply.

A Léger survey commissioned by the association found about two-thirds of Quebecers did not want governments influencing which music is available on streaming services