Canada working to forestall steep tariffs that US President Donald Trump says might be imposed as early as February 1.
Canadian Overseas Minister Melanie Joly will meet along with her US counterpart Marco Rubio in Washington, DC, as Canada seeks to stave off the specter of steep United States tariffs and a potential trade war between the 2 nations.
Joly is ready to carry talks with the US secretary of state on Wednesday afternoon within the US capital.
Her go to comes because the administration of US President Donald Trump has threatened to slap 25-percent tariffs on all Canadian items getting into the nation as early as Saturday.
“Our goal is to guarantee that we forestall [the tariffs] and we consider that we are able to achieve this,” Joly advised reporters in Ottawa earlier this week. “We are going to proceed to have interaction with our completely different American counterparts.”
The Canadian authorities has confronted mounting stress, together with from opposition lawmakers and enterprise leaders, to do no matter it might to stave off the doubtless crippling tariffs.
The US and Canada are main buying and selling companions. In keeping with Canadian authorities figures, the nations exchanged $2.7bn (3.6 billion Canadian {dollars}) in items and companies each day throughout their shared border in 2023.
Consultants say each economies can be affected by US tariffs, in addition to retaliatory measures from Canada.
However Trump has been threatening Canada and different nations with steep tariffs since he received the US presidential election in November.
Trump had warned that the tariffs in opposition to Canada would come into impact on his first day in workplace on January 20 if the nation did not do extra to halt irregular migration and drug trafficking throughout the border.
He later pushed the plan again to February 1.
“We’re going to be demanding respect from different nations,” Trump stated during a video address final week to the World Financial Discussion board summit in Davos, Switzerland, final week. “We’ve an incredible deficit with Canada. We’re not going to have that any extra. We are able to’t do it.”
White Home spokesperson Karoline Leavitt additionally stated this week that “the February 1 date for Canada” nonetheless stands.
“The president is dedicated to implementing tariffs successfully similar to he did in his first time period,” she advised reporters on Tuesday.
Canada has but to offer concrete particulars on what retaliatory measures it plans to enact ought to the Trump administration impose tariffs on Canadian items.
No one desires to see U.S. tariffs on Canadian items. However we will likely be prepared with a robust, nationwide response if we’d like one.
pic.twitter.com/NvxgEleP3N— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 28, 2025
Public broadcaster Radio-Canada reported earlier this month that the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ready a plan that may impose tariffs on $25.5bn (37 billion Canadian {dollars}) price of US items.
Ottawa can also be ready to enact stricter measures that would cowl as much as $76bn (110 billion Canadian {dollars}) price of products, Radio-Canada stated.
“Every little thing goes to be on the desk,” Jean Charest, a former Quebec premier who sits on Trudeau’s newly shaped Council on Canada-US Relations, stated in a current interview with CNN.
“I doubt that you just’ll hear Canadian officers discuss what they intend to do till they really do it, which is the best way that we’re going to handle this example.”
Charest additionally pressured the significance of Canadian power exports to the US.
The nation is the US’s largest international power provider: Practically 60 p.c of American crude oil imports got here from Canada in 2023, up from 33 p.c a decade earlier, based on the US Power Info Administration analysis group.
Canada despatched about 97 p.c of its crude oil exports south of the border that very same yr. The overwhelming majority of these provides got here from the oil-rich province of Alberta.
“There’s nobody although who’s been on the market saying we’re going to chop it off,” Charest stated. “However there are different choices on how we are able to cope with power to have the ability to make our level. We wouldn’t need to do this, but when we now have to make our level, we’ll.”
