{"id":179013,"date":"2026-08-22T21:41:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/179013\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T21:41:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:41:18","slug":"u-s-canada-trade-war-deepens-with-new-tariffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/179013\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S.-Canada trade war deepens with new tariffs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The United States and Canada, traditionally close allies<\/a> with a long history of cooperation, fell deeper into a trade war Saturday marked by angry recriminations and new tariffs that are expected to raise prices for products in both countries.<\/p>\n

The U.S. imposed 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products, prompting Canada to respond, setting Sept. 8 as the start of its retaliatory penalties. Each side blamed the other for the collapse of negotiations in Washington late Friday.<\/p>\n

President Trump\u2019s import taxes will hit about 5% of what Canada ships to the United States every year, on products from hockey sticks to tongue depressors. They went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Saturday as a deadline to reach a trade deal passed. <\/p>\n

Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Ottawa would respond with targeted tariff protection for industries exposed to the new U.S. duties, including some steel products. He also mentioned the dairy, appliance, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper and electronics sectors.<\/p>\n

No further talks were planned. Whatever the eventual outcome, a loss of trust seems one of the earliest casualties.<\/p>\n

Carney accused Washington of using \u201ceconomic integration as a weapon\u201d and said \u201cits signature was written in pencil.\u201d Resorting to the language of battle, he said his country had been \u201cattacked\u201d by the new American tariffs. \u201cYou\u2019re at war when you get attacked,\u201d he said, adding that Canada had the reserves, resilience and plan to respond.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s chief trade negotiator, Jamieson Greer, said the U.S. was compelled to act after a year of retaliation by its longtime partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve said enough, and so we\u2019ve taken countermeasures. Our interest is in protecting American workers and protecting American supply chains,\u201d the U.S. trade representative said Saturday on \u201dFox & Friends Weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada cites \u2018unacceptable\u2019 demands<\/p>\n

Carney said Canada had been willing to drop remaining retaliatory tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos if the U.S. substantially lowered its own, and to encourage provinces to restore U.S. alcohol sales. But he said Washington\u2019s final demands went too far. \u201cThey asked too much and offered too little,\u201d Carney said.<\/p>\n

Greer said the Trump administration was offering to cut tariffs on steel, autos and lumber, \u201cthings that are sensitive for them. And they\u2019ve always had the best deal, and they still would have an even better deal, but they didn\u2019t want that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, he said, \u201cwe\u2019re moving forward with measures that respond to Canadian retaliation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dominic <\/p>\n

Dominic LeBlanc, Canada\u2019s minister in charge of US-Canada trade, speaks to journalists as he leaves the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) in Washington, DC, on August 21, 2026, following trade talks amid ongoing trade tensions between Canada and the United States. Top Canadian negotiator Dominic LeBlanc said late August 21, that a US trade deal was not finalized, with just hours left until a midnight deadline when steep new tariffs are set to come into force. \u201cWe have more work to do. We\u2019re going to continue working up until the last minute. Our job is not finished,\u201d LeBlanc told reporters as he left the office of US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer after hours of talks.<\/p>\n

(Amid Farahi \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Carney said the U.S. added last-minute terms that would have reduced tariff relief for Canadian-made vehicles, restricted Canada\u2019s ability to strike trade deals with other countries and weakened protections for language, culture and sovereignty.<\/p>\n

He said such demands were \u201cunacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The breakdown in negotiations marked a sharp reversal from two days earlier, when officials from the two countries sounded as if they were headed toward a compromise.<\/p>\n

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who leads Canada\u2019s most populous province, praised Carney for rejecting the deal, saying it would have hurt Ontario\u2019s auto, steel and manufacturing sectors. Ford urged Canada to use \u201cevery tool in our toolbox\u201d to fight the U.S. tariffs.<\/p>\n

The moves also call into question the future of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA<\/a>, the Trump-negotiated trade pact that is crucial to industry in all three countries.<\/p>\n

A long-standing alliance sours<\/p>\n

The political impact will probably be even bigger than the economic fallout. The countries sold each other $880 billion worth of goods and services last year.<\/p>\n

The tariffs were initially supposed to kick in at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday. But Trump extended the deadline for three days to allow talks to continue, but the two countries still could not reach an agreement in time. <\/p>\n

Canada and the U.S. have wrangled for decades over trade, poking each other over sore spots such as Canadian softwood lumber imports and U.S. access to Canada\u2019s protected dairy market.<\/p>\n

Still, they have managed to remain friends, allies and trading partners. Canadian soldiers fought alongside Americans in Afghanistan after 9\/11. The 5,525-mile U.S.-Canada border is undefended, and nearly 330,000 people<\/a> and $2 billion worth of goods cross it every day; 800,000 Canadians live in the United States.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s approach to dealing with Canada marks an extraordinary departure from the traditionally cooperative relationship between the two countries. Trump has hit Canadian goods with tariffs \u2014 in what he says is a push to bring manufacturing back to the United States \u2014 and has repeatedly made inflammatory comments about turning Canada into America\u2019s 51st state.<\/p>\n

Carney said Canada had recognized that \u201cAmerica has changed\u201d and that the two countries would \u201cnot return to our old relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canadians and Americans are frustrated<\/p>\n

The Canadian public is fed up. A petition to expel the U.S. ambassador, a Trump ally, has collected nearly 248,000 signatures since July 21. It accuses Ambassador Pete Hoekstra of having \u201cnormalized\u2019\u2019 Trump\u2019s talk of annexing Canada, among other things.<\/p>\n

The two countries had good reasons to find a compromise.<\/p>\n

Nearly 72% of Canada\u2019s exported goods<\/a> last year went to the United States. And the Trump administration might be wary of imposing a hefty new tariff \u2014 paid by U.S. importers who try to pass along the cost to consumers via higher prices \u2014 ahead of November\u2019s midterm elections. American voters are already frustrated with the high cost of living.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada likely wanted further sector-specific relief than the U.S. was willing to offer, or Canada\u2019s concessions did not go far enough,\u2019\u2019 said Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding and a former U.S. trade official. \u201cEither way, I think both sides will be under immense pressure in the coming days to still find an offramp. But if Canada has agreed to also impose tariffs, the offramp may be even harder to find.\u201d<\/p>\n

Candace Laing, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, called the tariffs \u201ca body blow to North American competitiveness\u201d and warned they would raise costs for Americans while threatening Canadian customers, investment and small businesses.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s Depression-era trade penalties<\/p>\n

Trump has made tariffs the centerpiece of his second-term economic agenda. Last year, he imposed double-digit import taxes on almost every country, justifying them by declaring the long-standing U.S. trade deficit a national emergency. The Supreme Court in February ruled that he had overstepped his authority. The justices struck down the trade penalties and set the stage for the federal government to pay refunds to importers.<\/a> <\/p>\n

So Trump has looked for other legal authority to justify tariffs.<\/p>\n

To punish Canada, he reached back to the Great Depression, invoking Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to threaten 50% tariffs on products that account for about 5% of Canadian exports to the United States.<\/p>\n

Nearly a century ago, with the U.S. and world economies in collapse, Congress passed the 1930 tariff law, imposing taxes on imports from around the world. Known as the Smoot-Hawley tariffs after their congressional sponsors, they are notorious among economists and historians for limiting world commerce and making the Great Depression worse.<\/p>\n

Section 338, which has never been used before to impose tariffs, authorizes the president to enact import taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries that have discriminated against U.S. businesses. No investigation is required to justify the levies. Nor is there any limit on how long they can stay in place.<\/p>\n

The rift comes as the United States, Mexico and Canada are trying to renew a trade agreement that Trump negotiated in his first term and once praised as a triumph. The United States has begun formal talks with Mexico over revamping the USMCA. But talks with Canada have not begun and escalating trade conflict casts doubt on whether they will.<\/p>\n

Wiseman and Gillies write for the Associated Press. Gillies reported from Toronto. AP writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The United States and Canada, traditionally close allies with a long history of cooperation, fell deeper into a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[17,1644,22839,56649,111,1726,55224,56647,6339,5150,54119,28,2878,30,56648],"class_list":["post-179013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-canada","tag-country","tag-good","tag-historic-ally","tag-mark-carney","tag-market","tag-midnight","tag-past-day","tag-tariff","tag-trade-deal","tag-trade-deal-deadline","tag-trump","tag-u-s","tag-united-states","tag-worth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}