Trump’s Secret Scramble Leaks After His Canada Move Backfires
Donald Trump is scrambling to figure out new ways to punish Canada after his crushing import tariffs sparked a spiraling trade war with America’s second-largest trading partner.
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After long-running trade talks broke down on Friday, the U.S. imposed a 50-percent tariff on about $20 billion in Canadian goods under a never-before-used provision of the Depression-era Tariff Act of 1930.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney retaliated on Tuesday by doubling existing counter-tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum—and by imposing new duties on American-produced milk, furniture, clothing, and electronics—resulting in 50-percent levies on about $20 billion in annual U.S. exports.
In response, the Trump administration is discussing additional trade penalties against Canada, Bloomberg reported.
Those penalties could take the form of even higher tariffs or other trade actions, a White House official told the outlet.
The president has already promised to double tariffs on Canadian auto parts to 50 percent, but additional countermeasures are expected, the official told Bloomberg. The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.
The duties are a type of import tax paid by American companies, which must either eat the additional costs or pass them on to consumers.
Canada’s counter-tariffs appear to target products made in hotly contested Republican-held congressional districts that will help determine which party controls Congress after November’s midterm elections, the Wall Street Journal reported.
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For example, the duties target nearly 200 seafood products from Maine, where Republican Sen. Susan Collins faces a tough re-election campaign against progressive Troy Jackson.
The opinion editors of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Journal warned Monday that a trade war with Canada makes “no economic or political sense,” and called the Canadian duties Trump’s “dumbest” tariff plan to date.
The levies—which are deeply unpopular among voters—could further exacerbate a cost-of-living crisis that has already hit tens of millions of Americans.
After Canada announced its “dollar-for-dollar” counter-tariffs, Trump, 80, fired off a series of social media threats.
“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer,” he wrote first thing Tuesday morning.
He then accused Canada of “ripping off” the U.S. for decades, and complained that, “I deal with many countries, and Canada is easily the most difficult and unreasonable. They feel entitled, but they are not a State, and will be entitled no longer!”
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