Trade Feud Simmers As Canada Places Tariffs On Over $2 Billion In US Goods

Canada has placed tariffs on $2.7 billion worth of U.S. goods in response to the recent escalation in trade conflicts. On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced an order reinstating a 10% tariff on Canadian aluminum, inciting retaliation from the ally nation.

“Canada will respond swiftly and strongly,” Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said Friday at a press conference. “We will impose dollar-for-dollar countermeasures in a balanced and perfectly reciprocal retaliation. We will not escalate and we will not back down.”

Trump made the tariff announcement during a visit to a Whirlpool manufacturing plant in Ohio, claiming that Canada was “taking advantage” of the U.S.

“Canada was taking advantage of us, as usual,” Trump said.

“The aluminum business was being decimated by Canada,” he said. “Very unfair to our jobs and our great aluminum workers.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he would counter these tariffs almost immediately after Trump’s proclamation.

“These tariffs are unnecessary, unwarranted and entirely unacceptable,” Freeland continued. “They should not be imposed. Let me be clear: Canadian aluminum is in no way a threat to U.S. national security, which remains the ostensible reason for these tariffs, and that is a ludicrous notion.”

Trump’s tariff decision came months after NAFTA was replaced with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and the decisions to lift tariffs on Canadian aluminum in 2019. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had told Trump that aluminum imports would spike considerably after the agreement.

“In light of the Secretary’s information, I have determined that the measures agreed upon with Canada are not providing an effective alternative means to address the threatened impairment to our national security from imports of aluminum from Canada,” read the text of Trump’s announcement.