Canada details retaliatory US tariffs with political bite

What happened

Canada on Tuesday released a list of more than 700 U.S. products it plans to tax at up to 50% in response to 50% tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on $20 million of Canadian goods over the weekend. The “dollar-for-dollar, rate-for-rate counter-tariffs” will be paired with $5.4 billion in support to protect Canadian workers and businesses, said Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne in a press conference. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said Canada was “targeting products” that will “put political pressure” on the Trump administration in certain states.

Who said what

Trump’s “trade war with Canada is escalating as the midterm elections approach,” voters are angry over rising costs and “control of the U.S. Senate hinges on states along the border,” like Michigan, Ohio, Maine and Alaska, The Associated Press said. Senior Canadian officials maintained that Ottawa “did not design the new measures around the U.S. electoral map.”

But Canada’s retaliatory tariffs “targeted products made in states with hotly contested congressional elections,” The Wall Street Journal said. Ottawa is “trying to show the Republican Party that there’s a systemic cost to doing this sort of thing,” former U.S. trade official Ed Gresser told the Journal.

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What next?

Canada’s retaliatory tariffs don’t take effect until Sept. 8, so “there’s still time to pull back from the brink of an even bigger trade war,” the AP said. “Voters hate tariffs,” and Trump must be “hearing from political folks that if he wants any chance of salvaging the midterms he can’t start a trade war with Canada,” Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute told the AP. “My guess” is “cooler heads do prevail somewhere in the next few weeks.”