CANADA IS SET to announce its response to the tariffs imposed by US president Donald Trump as political leaders on both sides continue to throw rhetorical shots across the border.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today Trump said the US was giving \u201cserious consideration\u201d to renaming Lake Ontario \u201cLake America\u201d. That came after the premier of the Canadian province of Ontario told Trump he could \u201ckiss my ass\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Talks to reach a new trade deal collapsed last Friday after the US reportedly made new demands that Canada found unacceptable.<\/p>\n
Those included limits of Canada\u2019s future trade agreements with other countries and what prime minister Mark Carney called \u201cthreats\u201d to the French language and culture of the province of Quebec.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Carney also said \u201cAmerica has changed\u201d and that \u201cits signature was written in pencil\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The result was that the Trump administration imposed 50% tariffs on\u00a0a wide range of goods worth around $20 billion (\u20ac17.1 billion), or 5.5% of Canadian exports to the United States. Then on Tuesday, Trump declared the US would impose 50% tariffs on the Canadian auto industry beginning on 1 January next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Carney said over the weekend that Canada\u2019s retaliatory tariffs would target the US steel and dairy industries.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked,\u201d Carney said.<\/p>\n
US Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, blamed Canada\u2019s \u201cunreasonable last-minute demands.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US is by far Canada\u2019s biggest trading partner, with Canadian exports to its neighbour representing 70% of its overall total.<\/p>\n
Canada is the United States\u2019 second-biggest trading partner in goods this year, behind Mexico, according to government data.\n<\/p>\n
\u2018Kiss my ass\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Insults and accusations have been flying back and forth between the Trump administration and political leaders in Canada since the negotiations fell through on Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One Canadian politician at the forefront in the war of words has been Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, who yesterday invited Trump to \u201ckiss my ass\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he has a lot of room to kiss my ass. I\u2019m a big dude. What can I say?\u201d Ford said at a press conference.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ford said\u00a0Trump was \u201ca dictator\u201d who could not be trusted. He also labelled the US president the \u201cking of bankruptcies\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Trump is the type of person who would steal your lunch money,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump had said Ford was the \u201cless charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford\u201d, the former mayor of Toronto who died in 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump also said Canada \u201ccouldn\u2019t survive\u201d without the US and referred to prime minister Carney as \u201cgovernor\u201d while calling premier Ford a \u201cflunky\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will not be allowed to keep taking advantage of the United States \u2014 Their key to survival,\u201d he wrote on his Truth Social website.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone should get these clowns to \u2018fall in line\u2019 or, the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!\u201d<\/p>\n
When Ford was asked by reporters what he made of Trump\u2019s insults, he said:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in this game a lot longer than he has. I got skin like an alligator. You think an insult from him hurts me? Bring it on, buddy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve dealt with guys like you my whole life and guess what, you all become losers, because you\u2019re a loser.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a sign that Canada is serious about its lack of trust in the US as a trade partner, Carney said his government would be starting \u201cintense discussions with the European Union\u201d this autumn<\/p>\n
He said the talks would aim \u201cto build a much stronger and deeper economic and security partnership\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can build such unparalleled access because we\u2019re trusted, because we\u2019re reliable and because we have what the world wants.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, Trump sought to push back against Carney\u2019s version of the events that led to the collapse of the negotiations, saying:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI would never interfere with Canadians speaking French! In fact, I have never even thought of doing such a stupid thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
With reporting from AFP\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CANADA IS SET to announce its response to the tariffs imposed by US president Donald Trump as political…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[277292,9,10,995,356,277293,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,1543,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-655940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-bad-neighbours","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-canada","tag-donald-trump","tag-doug-ford","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-usa","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117157111270160828","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655940","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=655940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}