President Trump intensified his fight with Canada on Tuesday, threatening with double tariffs on the imports of steel and aluminum and pressing to convert one of the closest traditional allies in the United States in state 51. After several tense hours, both sides backed up, at least for now.
It was the last one in a week of chaotic commercial movements, in which the president stood out to investors and businesses that depended on trade and faced some of the closest commercial partners in the country.
In a publication on its social media platform on Tuesday morning, Trump wrote that steel and Canadian aluminum would face a 50 percent rate, twice what he plans to collect in metals from other countries as of Wednesday. He said that the taxes were in response to an additional position that Ontario had put to electricity that entered the United States, which in turn was an answer to the rates that Trump imposed to Canada last week.
For Tuesday afternoon, the leaders had begun to give in. The Prime Minister of Ontario, the most populous province in Canada, said it would suspend electricity surcharge, and Trump said in the White House that “it would probably” reduce the fee of Canadian metals.
Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said Tuesday afternoon that Trump’s threats had made Canada backward. “President Trump has once again used the leverage of the US economy, which is the best and biggest in the world, to deliver a victory for the American people,” he said.
As a result, he said that Canada would face the same 25 percent tariff on metals as all United States commercial partners when they will enter into force at midnight.
Even so, that tax could rekindle commercial tensions. The Canadian government has promised to retaliate against rates of 25 percent that Trump will present at steel and global aluminum on Wednesday.
“The Government of Canada has been clear on this issue from the beginning: if the United States advances tomorrow with the imposition of tariffs on Canadian products, including steel and aluminum, we will be ready to respond firmly and proportionally,” said Gabriel Brunet, spokesman for Dominic Leblanc, the finance minister led by Canada’s commercial response.
Trump’s new confrontation with Canada’s rates sent nerve markets overturning, with the main rates closing the day. In addition to duplicating metal tariffs, the president threatened more levies if Canada did not abandon several rates imposed on the dairy and agricultural products of the United States.
“If Canada does not reduce other atrocious and long rates, on April 2, the cars that enter the US that, essentially, permanently closed the car manufacturing business in Canada,” he threatened.
Trump continued to say that “the only thing that makes sense” is that Canada becomes state 51 of the United States. The idea of ​​joining the United States has been rejected throughout Canada.
The president reiterated those comments on Tuesday afternoon, saying that Canada would no longer have a tariff problem if it became part of the United States.
“When you take away that artificial line that seems to be done with a rule,” he said, referring to the border, “and that is what it was, some kind sat there years ago and they said, well, when you take away that, and you look at that beautiful formation of Canada and the United States, there is no place in the world that looks like this.”
Doug Ford, the Prime Minister of Ontario, said at a press conference in Toronto on Tuesday afternoon that he would suspend the 25 percent surcharge on electricity exports to Michigan, Minnesota and New York that entered into force on Monday.
“The temperature must drop,” Ford said.
In a statement issued together with Howard Lutnick, the United States Secretary of Commerce, Ford said the parties would meet in Washington on March 13 and would discuss a “renewed USMCA”, referring to the commercial agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States, before more rates to arrive on April 2.
Mr. Trump’s previous comments significantly increased a confrontation with one of the largest commercial partners in the United States, and questioned their intentions.
Canadian officials thought for the first time that Mr. Trump’s idea of ​​absorbing Canada in the United States was a joke, but more recently they have begun to take the president’s threats seriously.
Last week, outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada called on the apparent reason of Mr. Trump to impose tariffs on Canada, to stop the flow of fentanyl in the United States, “completely false.”
Mr. Trudeau suggested that what Mr. Trump wanted to see was a collapse of the Canadian economy “because that will facilitate annexation.”
“That will never happen,” he said.
Trump spent much of its publication on social networks on Tuesday essentially coating to Canada to become part of the United States, writing that it would make tariffs “disappear totally”, the lowest Canadian taxes and would make the country safer militarily.
In calls between Trump and Mr. Trudeau in early February, the US president told the Canadian prime minister that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between Canada and the United States was valid, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.
When asked at a press conference in January about whether he planned to use the military force to Annexar Canada, Trump replied that he would use the “Economic Force.”
Mark Carney, who will happen to Mr. Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada in the next few days, described the last tariff threat “an attack against workers, families and Canadian companies” in a publication on social networks.
He added: “My government will ensure that our response has the maximum impact on the United States and a minimum impact here on Canada. My government will keep our tariffs until Americans show us respect and make reliable and reliable commitments with free and fair trade. “
Trump, in his position, also addressed the Canadian dairy industry, saying that the country “must immediately drop its anti -American farmers from 250% to 390% in various dairy products in the United States, which for a long time has been considered scandalous.”
The Canadian dairy industry has become a frequent target of Mr. Trump in recent weeks, although their description of these barriers is misleading. Canada allows a certain amount of American dairy products to reach the country without rates, provided they do not exceed certain import fees, which increase every year. After imports reached a certain level, they are affected with high rates, for example, 298.5 percent for butter. The system is known as a “fee of fee”.
For a variety of reasons, American dairy exporters, which sent around $ 1.1 billion of their products to Canada last year, have never exceeded those quotas, so those rates have never been activated. The United States also has rate fees for some import imports and other goods, although its tariffs tend to be much lower.
Trump also said Tuesday that he would declare “a national emergency on electricity within the threatened area” that “would allow the United States to quickly do what should be done to relieve this abusive threat of Canada.”
“They will pay a financial price for this so big that it reads in history books for many years!” He said in a subsequent publication on social networks.
Ryan Young, a senior economist of the Competitive Institute Enterprise, said that putting tariffs on the goods of foreign countries would almost always incite them to retaliate, increasing costs for consumers and worsening concerns about a recession. “Sometimes the only way to win is not play,” he said. “This is true for nuclear war, and it is true for tariffs.”
Trump’s tariff threats and rapid reversals against the largest commercial partners in the United States have caused anxiety for investors and companies. The president imposed a 25 percent tariff on imports from Mexico and almost all Canada imports last Tuesday.
But Trump partly lifted the measure after the stock markets sank and several industries backed down. For Thursday, the President suspended those rates indefinitely for all products that comply with the North American Free Trade Agreement, the American-Mexico-Canada or USMCA agreement, approximately half of all imports in Mexico and almost 40 percent of those in Canada.
The president has repeatedly promised that there are more rates on the way. He has said that foreign cars would impose tariffs, as well as “reciprocal” tariffs on foreign nations on April 2.
Eswar Prasad, a commercial policy professor at Cornell University and former official of the International Monetary Fund, said the threats against Canada would have important repercussions not only for American economies “but for the stability of the world order.”
“Trump’s aggressive tariff actions against a country seen for a long time as an economic and geopolitical ally of the US.
Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Danielle Kaye Contributed reports.
