Canada hits US with steep tariffs in mounting trade spat

What happened

Canada on Tuesday morning imposed steep tariffs on about $20 billion of U.S. imports, aiming to match President Donald Trump’s recent 50% tariffs dollar for dollar. The hundreds of U.S. products slapped with the tariffs, ranging from 15% to 50%, include steel, aluminum, cheese, clothing, appliances and farm equipment. Trump has been “trying to humiliate Canada economically” since trade talks broke down in acrimony last month, The New York Times said, but Prime Minister Mark Carney has his “insulted and angry nation solidly behind him.”

Who said what

Carney’s new retaliatory tariffs cover goods worth “roughly 6%” of U.S. exports to Canada last year, so they’re “unlikely to dent U.S. growth overall,” The Associated Press said. But “Canada has already gone beyond tariffs in other ways,” slashing U.S. alcohol sales with provincial bans and boycotting other goods, while Canadians “sharply cut travel” to the U.S.

The “spat with Canada” is the “latest evidence” that Trump “remains as committed as ever to his disruptive strategy of trade brinkmanship,” the Times said, despite “nearly two years of blistering court defeats, vicious international disputes and mounting domestic blowback” over rising prices and severed trade relationships.

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What next?

Trump over the weekend suggested ending all trade with Canada and on Monday night threatened to block sales of Canadian Bombardier aircraft inside the U.S. Carney has “become symbolic of resistance,” Canadian historian Robert Bothwell told the AP. So Trump will try to “make an example” of him and Canada to “theoretically terrify everybody else while in fact showing them that they need to remove themselves even further from the United States.”