US President Donald Trump announced an additional 10 percent in tariffs on Canada in response to an advertisement by the province of Ontario that is critical of the levies, escalating tensions in one of the world’s biggest bilateral trade relationships.
Trump’s Truth Social post follows days of public clashes over the ad, which invoked former US president Ronald Reagan’s stance as a free trader and triggered the current US president’s ire, prompting him to suspend trade negotiations with Canada.
“Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10 percent over and above what they are paying now,” Trump said on Saturday.
Photo: AFP
The US president did not specify the scope of his new measure.
While Canada faces a US base tariff of 35 percent, the rate does not apply to most Canadian goods because of an exemption for products and shipments made within the rules of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
For example. that means millions of barrels of oil per day still flow from Canada to the US tariff-free.
Steel and aluminum products do not have that waiver — they are subject to 50 percent US tariffs on foreign metals — and Canadian-made cars and trucks are only partially eligible for exemption from Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on most foreign autos.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has been engaged in talks with the US to lower the levies, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford has pledged to pause the Ontario-funded ads in the US today after speaking to Carney in hopes that the talks could resume.
The clash has reignited uncertainty between two partners that exchanged US$900 billion in goods and services last year and have closely interwoven supply chains for major industries.
Ontario, with a population of 16 million just across the border, has been at the trade war’s center because of its steel and automotive industries — two sectors Trump has hit with his import taxes. About three-quarters of Canada’s goods exports went to the US last year.
The US president on Thursday said he would end all talks with Canada because of the ad, which used excerpts from a 1987 Reagan speech defending free trade and slamming tariffs as an outdated notion that stifles innovation, drives up prices and hurts US workers.
When Reagan delivered the radio address, he had just placed “select” tariffs on Japanese electronics for what he considered unfair trade practices. At the same time, he used the speech to urge the US Congress against passing a protectionist trade bill aimed at Japan.
The Reagan quotations were edited together from different parts of his speech, prompting the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute to complain that the ad misrepresented the full address. The foundation said it is reviewing its legal options.
Trump made his latest announcement while en route to a three-country trip to Asia that includes stops at the ASEAN summit in Malaysia and the APEC summit in South Korea.
Carney is on an extended trip to Asia, where he is also scheduled to attend those summits and is working on boosting trade ties with other nations.
Asked if he had any plans to meet Carney during the two summits, the US president said as he began his trip that “I don’t have any intention of it, no.”
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