HEFTY US TARIFFS on some Canadian products took effect today after days of negotiations that went down to the wire failed to produce an agreement.<\/p>\n
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney vowed that his country will match the US tariffs \u201cdollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses,\u201d as officials said late Friday that Washington and Ottawa had not managed to strike a deal.<\/p>\n
The lack of a final agreement means that new 50-percent duties impacting some $20 billion (\u20ac17.1 billion) worth of goods, or 5.5% of Canadian exports to the United States, came into force.<\/p>\n
Impacted products range from hockey sticks to cement.<\/p>\n
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Friday that \u201ctonight, Canada declined to finalise the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week.\u201d<\/p>\n
That came despite Washington\u2019s offers for tariff reductions in sectors like steel and aluminium, he added in a statement.<\/p>\n
A senior US official said there are no further scheduled meetings for now.<\/p>\n
The surprise announcement came after Trump said that the United States \u201cshould be able to have a deal with Canada,\u201d citing his \u201cgood relationship\u201d with Carney.<\/p>\n
After hours of trade talks on Friday, however, Canada\u2019s top negotiator Dominic LeBlanc told reporters that officials still \u201chave more work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
LeBlanc and Greer also met for around three hours on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Greer said that the Trump administration put on the table \u201csignificant tariff reductions on steel, aluminium, autos and lumber\u201d in exchange for concessions from Canada.<\/p>\n
He said that Canada was also maintaining its \u201cprolonged retaliation\u201d against the United States, including prohibitions on certain American goods and services.<\/p>\n
Canada\u2019s regional leaders said previously that the United States was particularly irritated by one retaliatory measure: the removal of US alcohol and wine from liquor stores.<\/p>\n
But Carney added in a separate statement that \u201clast-minute changes in the US proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Washington and Ottawa made \u201cimportant progress\u201d in recent weeks, Carney said, this \u201chas not been enough to meet our objectives for Canadians.\u201d<\/p>\n
The senior US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Canada had sought additional concessions that the United States was unable to provide.<\/p>\n
But they added that talks were candid and not acrimonious.\n<\/p>\n
\u2018Significant pressure\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ryan Majerus, a former US commerce official, told AFP that \u201cif Canada has agreed to also impose retaliatory tariffs, that will make deescalating this a lot harder.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think both sides will face significant pressure in the coming days to find an off-ramp,\u201d added Majerus, a trade lawyer with King & Spalding.<\/p>\n
Christopher Padilla, another former US official who is now with Brunswick Group, told AFP there has been\u00a0\u201da lot of hope among businesses on both sides\u201d for a deal to \u201cturn the page on what has been a very difficult eighteen months in the US-Canada relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n
The White House had alleged \u201cdiscriminatory treatment\u201d by Canada against US alcohol, automobile and dairy products in introducing the duties.<\/p>\n
They were originally set to take effect on Wednesday, before Trump issued a last-minute delay of three days, citing major progress in talks.<\/p>\n
Canadian negotiators had been camped out in Washington this week to firm up a deal that aimed to address various flash points.<\/p>\n
Canada has been seeking relief from Trump\u2019s tariffs on autos, steel and aluminium, which have battered the country\u2019s economy, forced job losses and strained what was once an iron-clad trade relationship.<\/p>\n
Carney has repeatedly told Canadians that relations with the United States have been forever changed, regardless of what happens with an individual trade deal.<\/p>\n
He says the country must diversify and reduce its reliance on the United States, which currently accounts for roughly 70% of Canadian exports.<\/p>\n
Beyond the latest tariffs, the United States and Canada still have to agree on revisions to the North American free trade agreement, USMCA, which Trump declined to renew in its current form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HEFTY US TARIFFS on some Canadian products took effect today after days of negotiations that went down to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[17815,57217,9,10,995,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,15847,5,1255,7,8,36119,3429,187,1543,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-650414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-again","tag-at-it-again","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-canada","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-mark-carney","tag-news","tag-tariffs","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-trade-deal","tag-trade-war","tag-trump","tag-usa","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117138209393420116","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}