Canada forced the United States’ hand in delivering its latest trade war escalation, according to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade czar.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer issued a statement late Tuesday shortly after Trump signed five executive orders that banned most imports of Canadian dairy and alcohol products, as well as motorcycles.
“After weeks of good faith and intensive efforts between U.S. and Canadian negotiators, Canada walked away from a near-final trade deal that offered better treatment than any other trading partner, and instead Canada chose to embark on senseless retaliation against the United States,” said Greer.
“Today’s [Tuesday’s] action, combining targeted import bans as authorized by Section 338 and a calibration of the underlying Section 338 tariffs, is a natural consequence of Canada’s continued discriminatory treatment of crucial American exports, ranging from alcoholic beverages to dairy products to motor vehicles. President Trump will continue to leverage the tools at his disposal to defend the interests of American workers and exporters, and restore reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney pulled the plug on trade negotiations in August saying Canada was “walking away from a bad deal,” and cited three key sticking points that led the talks to collapse.
One of the issues related to automotive tariffs, and what Carney referred to as “the treatment of Canadian content” in some motor vehicles. The proposed deal only offered tariff relief for cars, while medium or heavy vehicles like trucks were excluded, which Carney said would severely impact Canada’s automotive manufacturing sector.
Another issue Carney described was that the United States wanted to include terms in the deal that would put limits on the trade deals Canada was able to seek with other countries.
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Finally, Carney said there were disagreements over French language rules, with few details of exactly where the two sides had disagreed but suggested it related, in particular, to French and said those rules would have amounted to a broader attack on Canada.
“[There were] efforts to restrict our protections of our language, our culture, and in effect, our sovereignty,” he said.
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Canada’s minister responsible for U.S. trade, Dominic LeBlanc, issued a statement on social media late Tuesday in response, and said he is “in contact” with Greer.
“When the US is ready to engage, our government will work in good faith and constructively towards a more secure mutually beneficial trading relationship that fully respects Canadian sovereignty,” said LeBlanc.
An earlier statement from LeBlanc’s press secretary on Tuesday said, “Canadian and American officials have maintained ongoing discussions on a range of issues, although formal trade negotiations are not taking place at this stage.”
The latest trade war escalation by the U.S. followed Canada implementing dollar-for-dollar counter tariff measures on U.S. goods on Tuesday, and after tariffs of 50 per cent were imposed on hundreds of Canadian products last month.
Trump last month used Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to hit Canada with 50 per cent tariffs, accusing Canada of treating the U.S. unfairly.
Tuesday’s executive orders justified Trump’s latest move by saying Canada didn’t stop its discrimination against U.S. autos, dairy and vehicles so now they are able to block the import of certain products because it is “consistent with the interests of the United States and the public interests.”
Speaking in a video posted on social media prior to Trump’s latest escalation, and after implementing counter-tariff measures on the U.S., Carney said, “in the spring of last year, I warned that America is trying to break us so they can own us. And I promised that that will never, ever happen.”
Carney also warned Canadians that “this won’t be easy, and I won’t pretend otherwise,” adding that the alternative would be far worse.
– with files from Global News’ Isaac Callan and The Canadian Press.
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