Canada fires back at Trump’s 50% tariffs

The US president imposed unprecedented duties on Canadian goods after Washington and Ottawa failed to reach a deal

Ottawa will introduce reciprocal “dollar-for-dollar” measures in response to the 50% tariffs the US has imposed on Canadian goods, Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement on Friday, after trade talks with Washington broke down.

The latest round of intense negotiations lasted three days and was aimed at wrapping up months of talks between Washington and Ottawa, with mutual tariffs threatening to escalate into an all-out trade war.

“Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses,” the statement reads.

The prime minister stressed that “last-minute changes in the US-proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”

Earlier in the day, the Trump administration invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a rarely used provision that allows the head of state to impose duties of up to 50% on imports from countries deemed to have subjected US commerce to unequal or discriminatory treatment.

The tariffs, which came into effect just after midnight on Saturday and cover about 5% of Canada’s US-bound exports, target goods ranging from plywood and cement to wine and hockey sticks, Western media outlets have reported.

Read more

The dispute, which dates back to Trump’s first term, was rekindled after he returned to office last year and imposed sweeping tariffs on imports from a wide range of countries, including Canada, Mexico, China, the EU and Japan. Trump once again accused America’s trading partners of unfairly benefiting from access to the US market.

Earlier this week, Trump delayed the 50% levies, originally scheduled to take effect on August 19, to give negotiators additional time to reach a deal.

At the time, Trump said Washington and Ottawa had agreed to revive the Keystone XL pipeline project, which was intended to transport Canadian oil to the US, while Carney noted significant progress made by the two sides in trade talks.

AP has cited a senior Trump administration official as saying that Canada had been seeking concessions from Washington on tariffs previously imposed by the US president on steel, aluminum, automobiles and lumber, but the US has so far shown no willingness to make such concessions.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement shortly after midnight that despite the US offer to give Canada “the best treatment of any major exporter to our market,” new demands and walk-backs of other commitments by Ottawa had “upended the careful balance” reached in recent days.

READ MORE: Trump and Canada have a deal*

Commenting on the US tariffs, Candace Laing, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, called the collapse “a body blow to North American competitiveness in this self-defeating trade saga.” She warned that “Americans will see their costs go up, and Canadians will see customers, investment and small businesses disappear.”

Carney has, however, pledged to introduce additional measures to support Canadian workers and businesses in the coming days, as well as to diversify the country’s partnerships abroad.