WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. and Canada are negotiating in an effort to reach a truce on tariffs before a 12:01 a.m. Wednesday deadline set by U.S. President Donald Trump.
If no deal is reached, Trump has threatened to impose 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products, ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors.
″We are negotiating,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters Monday, speaking in French. “The negotiations are very intense and delicate. This is not the time to talk about negotiations in public.”
Carney and Trump spoke by phone Monday afternoon about the ongoing trade negotiations, Carney’s office said, underscoring the last-minute push to reach a deal before Wednesday’s deadline.
The two countries have wrangled for decades over trade, poking each other over sore spots like Canadian softwood lumber imports and U.S. access to Canada’s protected dairy market.
Somehow they still managed to remain friends, allies and trading partners. Canadian soldiers fought alongside Americans in Afghanistan after 9/11. The 5,525-mile U.S.-Canada border is undefended, and nearly 330,000 people and $2 billion worth of goods cross it every day; 800,000 Canadians live in the United States.
Trump’s approach to dealing with Canada marks an extraordinary departure from the traditionally cooperative relationship between the two countries. Trump has hit Canadian goods with tariffs — in a push to bring manufacturing back to the United States — and has repeatedly made inflammatory comments about turning Canada into America’s 51st state.
The Canadian public is fed up. A petition to expel the U.S. ambassador, a Trump ally, has collected nearly 218,000 signatures since July 21. It accuses Ambassador Pete Hoekstra of having “normalized’’ Trump’s talk of annexing Canada, among other things.
Looking for an off-ramp
Nearly 72% of Canada’s goods exports last year went to the United States. And the Trump administration might be wary of imposing a hefty new tariff — paid by U.S. importers who try to pass along the cost to consumers via higher prices — ahead of November’s midterm elections. American voters are already frustrated with the high cost of living.
“I don’t think either side really wants these tariffs to come into effect,’’ said Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding and a former U.S. trade official. “There’s a pretty strong push on both sides to find an off ramp here.’’
Majerus said the United States is aiming to get Canada to buy more U.S. military equipment, including F-35 fighters; to take part in Trump’s “Golden Dome’’ missile defense; and to give the United States more access to critical minerals, thereby reducing America’s reliance on tenuous supplies from its geopolitical rival, China.
The Canadians would like relief from U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum as well as softwood lumber, which America says receives unfair government subsidies.
Trump relies on Smoot-Hawley to go after Canada
Trump has made tariffs the centerpiece of his second-term economic agenda. Last year, he imposed double-digit import taxes on almost every country on earth, justifying them by declaring the longstanding U.S. trade deficit a national emergency. The Supreme Court in February ruled that he’d overstepped his authority, striking down those tariffs and setting the stage for the federal government to pay refunds to importers.
Trump immediately looked for other ways to rebuild his tariff wall. Last month, he imposed import taxes of 10% to 12.5% on 59 countries and the European Union — which together account for 99% of U.S. imports — for allegedly failing to have or to enforce restrictions on imports made from forced labor.
Then he reached back to the Great Depression to find a cudgel with which to whack Canada, one of his favorite targets.
Trump invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to impose 50% tariffs on products that account for about 5% of Canadian exports to the United States.
