As promised President Donald Trump’s doubling of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports went into effect on Wednesday. They now stand at 50 percent.
In Ottawa, Prime Minister Mark Carney called the doubling of tariffs unfair and unjustified, but Canada is ready.
“We have counter-tariffs in a gross amount before remissions on over 90 billion of US imports. We’ve acted strong. Those are in place. We will take some time, not much, some time because we are in intensive discussions right now with the Americans on the trading relationship. Those discussions are progressing,” Carney said. “I would note that the American action is a global action, it’s not one targeted at Canada. So, we will take some time.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Washington broke a verbal agreement by hiking tariffs on steel and aluminum. He wants a dollar-for-dollar retaliation from Ottawa.
“What President Trump has done here is increase the tax of 15 billion dollars on the backs of Americans. We know just steel alone, anything built with steel in the US has gone up 16 percent. And I’ve directed our office to make sure anything that we build here, the 30 billion dollars that we’re importing, to onshore as much as we can,” Ford said.
Ford adds that quote, “We can’t sit back and let Trump steamroll us and try to shut down our steel industry.”
Canada’s steel industry, which employs 23-thousand workers, could be devastated and in retaliation. Ford said, once again, that everything is on the table.
