Mark Carney in last-ditch effort to avoid Donald Trump’s latest tariffs
Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
Canada is making a last-ditch bid to avert a fresh volley of US tariffs on $20bn worth of goods from hockey sticks to liquor as relations between the North American neighbours come under fresh strain.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Monday that he would speak with US President Donald Trump before a deadline on Wednesday, in an effort to stop or reduce 50 per cent tariffs on a range of exports.
“We are negotiating, negotiations are very intense and delicate,” Carney told reporters in St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, on Canada’s east coast.
The new tariffs come as Carney has struggled to manage relations with Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to make Canada the 51st US state and plunged the neighbouring countries into an on-off trade war.
Trump reignited the trade dispute with the threat of new trade levies last month, a day after he and Carney met at the World Cup final, which the countries had hosted jointly with Mexico.
US levies are already in place on Canadian cars, steel, aluminium and forest products. But the new tariffs threaten sweeping consequences for Canada’s economy.
Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said 85 per cent of Canadian exports had remained tariff-free so far.
“The threat to impose 50 per cent tariffs on 12 pages’ worth of new products is make it or break it for thousands of smaller Canadian exporters,” he said.
After weeks of intense negotiations, Carney on Monday said Ottawa had “a plan that will cover all eventualities”.
If there is no agreement by Tuesday midnight, the US will implement the new levies using Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which has never been used to impose duties on trading partners. The US Supreme Court earlier this year invalidated the emergency powers Trump had used to impose many of his sweeping trade actions.
The Trump administration has complained about Canada’s “discrimination against and unreasonable and unequal treatment” of US commerce, pointing to what it sees as protectionist policies in the dairy industry and government procurement.
The US has also demanded that Canadian provinces scrap bans on American alcohol that were implemented last year in response to US tariffs.
“Any potential resolution has to include all of these, or a pathway forward for them,” US trade representative Jamieson Greer said on Friday, adding that talks with Ottawa had been “constructive”.
“For us, this is not a trade war. We have domestic supply chains we’re trying to protect and support,” he said. “If a country retaliates against us, we’re obviously not going to tolerate that. We’ll take action.”
A spokesperson for Dominic LeBlanc, the Canadian minister responsible for US trade, declined to comment on the state of the negotiations. The White House and USTR did not immediately respond.
The trade clash with the US’s closest and second-biggest trading partner comes after the Trump administration in July opted against a long-term renewal of its 2020 trade deal with Canada and Mexico, instead committing to a series of rolling talks.
