WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump hit back at Canada on Sunday after Prime Minister Mark Carney announced retaliatory tariffs on the United States following a breakdown in trade negotiations.
“Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“They have also charged our great farmers, for many years, massive amounts of Tariffs. No more!!!” he said.
New 50-percent US tariffs impacting about $20 billion worth of goods, or 5.5 percent of Canadian exports to the US, came into force Saturday.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Saturday that starting September 8 Canada would impose tariffs on imports from the United States across a raft of sectors in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s new 50% tariffs that came into effect from midnight.
After days of intense negotiations, the two countries failed to reach a trade deal late Friday, worsening an already delicate relationship between the two long-term trade partners and allies and complicating the future of a highly successful continental free trade pact called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement.
Trump’s new tariffs hit a slew of sectors including wine, furniture, dairy products, cement, clothing, fishing rods, hockey equipment and cover some $20 billion of Canadian exports south of the border. These duties do not give exemption to Canadian products under the USMCA, which have shielded most of Canadian exports to the U.S in the last 18 months.
“Canada will match Washington’s new tariffs dollar for dollar in order to protect Canadian workers, farmers, families, and businesses,” Carney said at a news conference.