Canada’s finance minister said the government kept 25 per cent retaliatory tariffs on tens of billions of dollars in US goods, disputing a report from a research firm that suggested it had paused the vast majority of those levies.
Francois-Philippe Champagne said 70 per cent of the counter-tariffs implemented by Canada in March were still in place, according to a social media post on Saturday.
The government “temporarily and publicly paused tariffs” on some items for health and public safety reasons, he said.
That 70 per cent figure implies that Canada continues to charge tariffs on about C$42 billion (US$30 billion) of US exports to Canada, excluding cars.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney after his swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday. He campaigned in the recent election as the best candidate to handle the trade war. Photo: Getty Images via AFP
Champagne’s post is pushing back on a May 13 report from Oxford Economics.
The note from economists Tony Stillo and Michael Davenport said recent government exemptions to tariffs covered so many categories of products that the result was a “nearly zero” increase in Canada’s tariff rate against the US.