Talks between the United States and Canada failed late Friday to head off steep new tariffs on Canadian goods, prompting Canada to enact \u201cdollar for dollar\u201d retaliation a few days later.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said he had suspended the talks<\/a> because the American side had introduced last-minute terms that were \u201cunfair, uneconomic and called into question the reliability of any deal.\u201d Then on Saturday, in a powerful speech<\/a> to Canadians, Mr. Carney said Canada was under attack by President Trump\u2019s tariffs and was \u201cat war\u201d with the United States.<\/p>\n Didn\u2019t President Trump say there was a deal?<\/p>\n He did, twice. On Tuesday, he said the two countries had reached a deal aside from some details and had extended an earlier deadline that would have introduced the new tariffs.<\/p>\n On Friday, only hours before the two sides announced the collapse of the negotiations, Mr. Trump said he thought a deal could be reached.<\/p>\n Why did negotiations fall apart?<\/p>\n Mr. Carney blamed last-minute demands for the collapse of negotiations<\/a>. He said, among other things, that American negotiators pushed to roll back Canada\u2019s efforts to promote Canadian, including French-language, content in online streaming services; subsidies for industries like publishing and film production; and even mandatory labeling in French as well as English on packaging. French is an official language in Canada.<\/p>\n Speaking to reporters on Friday, a U.S. official said Canada wanted concessions that the United States wasn\u2019t prepared to give, particularly when it came to the automotive sector, as well as trade in steel, aluminum and lumber.<\/p>\n Carney\u2019s fighting words<\/p>\n Slamming the U.S. proposal as \u201ca bad deal,\u201d Mr. Carney\u2019s forceful speech on Saturday made it clear that he considered Mr. Trump\u2019s tariffs an attack on Canada. \u201cWe\u2019ve recognized from the start that America has changed,\u201d he said. \u201cWe recognize that sometimes, its signature is written in pencil.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot accept what they offered and we will not give what they asked,\u201d he added. \u201cWe were not prepared to compromise Canada\u2019s sovereignty or undermine our key industries.\u201d<\/p>\n Canada retaliates<\/p>\n Canada announced retaliatory tariffs<\/a> as high as 50 percent on hundreds of American products on Tuesday. The country will start collecting tariffs of 50, 25 and 15 percent on about 700 products beginning on Sept. 8. The most significant measure is a doubling of tariffs on American steel and aluminum to 50 percent. But the list of products affected ranges from household rolls of aluminum foil to railway locomotives and steel bridges.<\/p>\n Many of the American products Canada will now tax mirror the Canadian exports<\/a> hit by the new U.S. tariffs, particularly in clothing, forestry products, tools and electronics including smartphones. But Canada is also targeting costly consumer products like dishwashers, washing machines and stoves.<\/p>\n What is the U.S. saying?<\/p>\n The United States had offered to reduce its tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos, and to eliminate a recently imposed tariff on Canadian lumber, before the negotiations suddenly collapsed, the U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, told The New York Times<\/a> in an interview on Saturday.<\/p>\n Early Sunday morning, Mr. Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, that Canada wanted the \u201cbenefits of being a State, without being one!!! They have also charged our great farmers, for many years, massive amounts of Tariffs. No more!!!\u201d<\/p>\n But he did not seem to respond directly to Mr. Carney\u2019s muscular speech against the United States.<\/p>\n What will the U.S. impose tariffs on?<\/p>\n The new tariffs account for $20 billion of the $382 billion worth of products Americans bought from Canada last year and cover a wide array of goods, from fake mustaches to dog leashes.<\/p>\n The full list of more than 500 products can be found here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n The lists single out several industries, particularly forestry, a sector long targeted by the United States. Building products, especially plywood, are affected, as well as other products like tissue used to make toilet paper. Dairy products, clothing and alcohol are also on the lists.<\/p>\n Many of the tariffs are on products like honey that often come from small businesses, likely without the financial means to withstand a substantial loss of business for any sustained period.<\/p>\n The collapse of the talks also means that Canada did not roll back the tariffs of up to 50 percent that Mr. Trump put on the auto, aluminum and steel industries last year. The president also added 10 percent tariffs on softwood lumber tariffs of 35 percent.<\/p>\n The tariffs came into effect on Saturday. Canada\u2019s retaliatory tariffs come into effect on Sept. 8, Mr. Carney said.<\/p>\n Weren\u2019t things already tense?<\/p>\n Yes. Since Mr. Trump began his second term, relations between the United States and Canada have been strained.<\/p>\n Not only has Mr. Trump targeted Canada with tariffs, he has insulted its leaders, suggested the border is an arbitrary line<\/a>, and repeatedly proposed the nation be annexed as the 51st state. He said he was willing to inflict \u201ceconomic pain\u201d on Canada to get what he wanted, and recently said the country only \u201clives because of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n In a speech in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Mr. Carney said that the United States was no longer a guarantor of stability<\/a>, and that middle powers like Canada must unite to survive. The speech, and its enthusiastic global reception, angered Mr. Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n Also, on July 1, Canada\u2019s national holiday, the Trump administration declined to renew the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade for another 16 years. That means the agreement will now undergo annual reviews.<\/p>\n Asked how the new U.S. tariffs will affect the agreement\u2019s continued renewal, Mr. Carney said, in French, that \u201cit certainly isn\u2019t good news.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Talks between the United States and Canada failed late Friday to head off steep new tariffs on Canadian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[27649,25461,17,735,8854,6796,6780,57673,6783,57674,28,6779,3123,57675],"class_list":["post-182879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-aluminum","tag-automobiles","tag-canada","tag-carney","tag-customs-tariff","tag-donald-j","tag-international-trade-and-world-market","tag-live-detached","tag-mark-j","tag-steel-and-iron","tag-trump","tag-united-states-international-relations","tag-united-states-mexico-canada-agreement","tag-wood-and-wood-products"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182879","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=182879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}