The trade war between Canada and the US continued to deepen on Monday as Donald Trump threatened a new wave of 50 per cent tariffs on imported cars, trucks, automobile parts and steel.
The US President hit back on Truth Social at Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s announcement of retaliatory tariffs coming into effect on September 8.
Trump threatened to impose the new tariffs on cars and auto parts from January 1, 2027.
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“Canada has been ripping off the United States of America for years,” Trump wrote. “On Trade, and in other ways, also, they are among the worst Nations in the World to deal with.”
That’s despite Canada’s status as the US’s third-highest source of US imports with almost $400 billion worth of goods moving across the border between the two former allies.
Each side continued to blame the other for the collapse of trade negotiations in Washington late Friday, resulting in the US to already impose its 50 per cent tariffs on $US20 billion worth of Canadian goods and Canada setting September 8 as the start of its retaliatory penalties.
Trump’s current import taxes will hit about 5 per cent of what Canada ships to the United States every year, ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors. Carney said Ottawa would respond with targeted tariff protection for industries exposed to the new US duties, including some steel products. He also mentioned the dairy, appliance, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper and electronics sectors.
No further talks were planned. Whatever the eventual outcome, a loss of trust seems one of the earliest casualties.
Carney accused Washington of using “economic integration as a weapon” and said “its signature was written in pencil.” Resorting to the language of battle, he said his country had been “attacked” by the new American tariffs. “You’re at war when you get attacked,” he said, adding that Canada had the reserves, resilience and plan to respond.
But to Trump’s chief trade negotiator, Jamieson Greer, the US was compelled to act after a year of retaliation by its longtime partner.
“We’ve said enough, and so we’ve taken countermeasures. Our interest is in protecting American workers and protecting American supply chains,” the U.S. trade representative told “Fox & Friends Weekend.”
Carney said Canada had been willing to drop remaining retaliatory tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos if the US substantially lowered its own, and to encourage provinces to restore US alcohol sales. But he said Washington’s final demands went too far. “They asked too much and offered too little,” Carney said.
Greer said the Republican administration was offering to cut tariffs on steel, autos and lumber, “things that are sensitive for them. And they’ve always had the best deal, and they still would have an even better deal, but they didn’t want that.”
As a result, he said, “We’re moving forward with measures that respond to Canadian retaliation.”
Carney said the US added last-minute terms that would have reduced tariff relief for Canadian-made vehicles, restricted Canada’s ability to strike trade deals with other countries and weakened protections for language, culture and sovereignty.
He said such demands were “unacceptable.”
The breakdown in negotiations marked a sharp reversal from two days earlier, when officials from the two countries sounded as if they were headed toward a compromise.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who leads Canada’s most populous province, praised Carney for rejecting the deal, saying it would have hurt Ontario’s auto, steel and manufacturing sectors. Ford urged Canada to use “every tool in our toolbox” to fight the U.S. tariffs.
The moves also call into question the future of a North American trade agreement covering the United States, Canada and Mexico that is crucial to industry in all three countries.
Carney said the breakdown was “certainly not good news” for the review of that agreement and that the failed negotiations had given Canada “a new perspective” on what Washington wants from the broader economic relationship.
A typically cooperative alliance goes sour
The political impact will likely be even bigger than the economic fallout. The countries sold each other $US880 billion worth of goods and services last year.
The tariffs were initially supposed to kick in at 12.01am, Wednesday. Trump extended the deadline for three days to allow talks to continue, but the countries could not reach an agreement in time.
The US and Canada have wrangled for decades over trade, poking each other over sore spots such as Canadian softwood lumber imports and U.S. access to Canada’s protected dairy market.
Somehow, they still managed to remain friends, allies and trading partners. Canadian soldiers fought alongside Americans in Afghanistan after 9/11. The 5,525-mile US-Canada border is undefended, and nearly 330,000 people and $2 billion worth of goods cross it every day; 800,000 Canadians live in the United States.
Trump’s approach to dealing with Canada marks an extraordinary departure from the traditionally cooperative relationship between the two countries. Trump has imposed tariffs on Canadian goods in a push to bring manufacturing back to the United States and made inflammatory comments about turning Canada into America’s 51st state.
Carney said Canada had recognized that “America has changed” and that the two countries would “not return to our old relationship.”
Canadians and Americans are frustrated
The Canadian public is fed up. A petition to expel US Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, a Trump ally, has collected nearly 248,000 signatures since July 21. It accuses the former Republican congressman from Michigan of having “normalized’‘ Trump’s talk of annexing Canada, among other things.
The two countries had good reasons to find a compromise.
Nearly 72 per cent of Canada’s goods exports last year went to the United States. The Trump administration might be wary of imposing new tariffs — paid by US importers who try to pass along the cost to consumers via higher prices — before the November midterm elections. American voters are already frustrated with the high cost of living.
“Both sides will be under immense pressure in the coming days to still find an off-ramp,” said Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding and a former US trade official.
Joshua Bolten, CEO of the Business Roundtable, which represents leaders of major US companies, warned the tariffs and retaliation risk “raising costs for American businesses and families” and disrupting vital supply chains, and urged both governments to resume negotiations.
Trump has turned to Depression-era trade penalties
Trump has made tariffs the centerpiece of his second-term economic agenda. Last year, he imposed double-digit import taxes on almost every country, justifying them by declaring the long-standing U.S. trade deficit a national emergency. The Supreme Court in February ruled that he had overstepped his authority. The justices struck down the trade penalties and set the stage for the federal government to pay refunds to importers.
So Trump has looked for other legal authority to justify tariffs.
After the Supreme Court struck down much of Trump’s earlier tariff program in February, the administration turned to other legal authorities. For Canada, Trump invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a rarely used Depression-era provision allowing tariffs of up to 50 per cent against countries deemed to discriminate against US businesses.
The provision is part of the Smoot-Hawley tariff law, widely blamed by economists and historians for worsening the Great Depression by restricting global trade. Section 338 has never previously been used to impose tariffs.
The rift comes as the United States, Mexico and Canada are trying to renew a trade agreement that Trump negotiated in his first term and once praised as a triumph. The United States has begun formal talks with Mexico over revamping the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, known as USMCA. But talks with Canada have not begun and escalating trade conflict casts doubt on whether they will.
