US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border.
Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order.
During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but Trump warned of serious consequences should that deal be realized.
Photo: AFP
If Carney “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the US, he is sorely mistaken,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life,” he said. “If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the USA.”
Trump insulted Carney by calling him “governor” — a swipe referring to the US president’s repeated insistence that Canada should be the 51st US state.
Trump last week posted an image on social media of a map with Canada — as well as Greenland and Venezuela — covered by the US flag.
Canadian Minister of International Trade Dominic LeBlanc pushed back against Trump’s latest threat.
“There is no pursuit of a free trade deal with China. What was achieved was resolution on several important tariff issues,” he wrote on X.
The two leaders have sharpened their rhetorical knives in the past few days, beginning with Carney’s speech on Tuesday last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he earned a standing ovation for his frank assessment of a “rupture” in the US-led global order.
His comment was widely viewed as a reference to Trump’s disruptive influence on international affairs, although Carney did not mention the US leader by name.
Trump fired back at Carney a day later in his own speech, and then withdrew an invitation for the Canadian prime minister to join his “Board of Peace” — his self-styled body for resolving global conflict.
Initially designed to oversee the situation in postwar Gaza, the body appears to have a far wider scope, sparking concerns that Trump wants to create a rival to the UN.
“Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements,” Trump said.
Carney shot back on Thursday: “Canada doesn’t live because of the United States. Canada thrives, because we are Canadian.”
He nevertheless acknowledged the “remarkable partnership” between the two nations.
Canada heavily relies on trade with the US, the destination for more than three-quarters of Canadian exports.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
A former flight attendant for a Canadian airline posed as a commercial pilot and as a current flight attendant to obtain hundreds of free flights from US airlines, authorities said on Tuesday. Dallas Pokornik, 33, of Toronto, was arrested in Panama after being indicted on wire fraud charges in US federal court in Hawaii in October last year. He pleaded not guilty on Tuesday following his extradition to the US. Pokornik was a flight attendant for a Toronto-based airline from 2017 to 2019, then used fake employee identification from that carrier to obtain tickets reserved for pilots and flight attendants on three other
RSS