Canadian officials say that if Donald Trump follows through with his threat of punishing tariffs, Canada would consider slapping retaliatory tariffs on American orange juice, toilets and some steel product. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Canada’s outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday (January 12, 2025) suggested that President-elect Donald Trump’s remarks about Canada becoming America’s “51st state” has distracted attention from the harm that steep tariffs would inflict on U.S. consumers.

Mr. Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports.

“The 51st state, that’s not going to happen,” Mr. Trudeau said in an interview with MSNBC. “But people are talking about that, as opposed to talking about what impact 25% tariffs (has) on steel and aluminum coming into the United States.”

Mr. Trudeau told MSNBC: “No American wants to pay 25% more for electricity or oil and gas coming in from Canada. That’s something I think people need to pay a little more attention to.”

Mr. Trump has also said that if Canada merged with the U.S., taxes would decrease and there would be no tariffs.

“I know that as a successful negotiator he likes to keep people off balance,” Mr. Trudeau said of Mr. Trump’s threats to use economic force to turn Canada into the 51st state. Mr. Trump has also erroneously cast the U.S. trade deficit with Canada — a natural resource-rich nation that provides the U.S. with commodities like oil — as a subsidy.

Canadian officials say that if Mr. Trump follows through with his threat of punishing tariffs, Canada would consider slapping retaliatory tariffs on American orange juice, toilets and some steel products. Already during Mr. Trump’s first term in the White House, Canada responded to Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum with its own on American products like bourbon, Harley Davidson motorcycles and playing cards.

“He got elected to try and make life easier for all Americans, to support American workers,” Mr. Trudeau said of Mr. Trump. “These (tariffs) are things that are going to hurt them.”

Mr. Trump said last week that the U.S doesn’t need oil, or anything else, from Canada. But almost a quarter of the oil that the U.S. consumes each day comes from Canada. The energy-rich western province of Alberta exports 4.3 million barrels of oil a day to the U.S.

Data from the United States Energy Information Administration shows that the U.S. consumes 20 million barrels a day, and produces about 13.2 million barrels a day.

Canada, a founding partner of NATO and home to more than 40 million people, is also the top export destination for 36 U.S. states. Nearly $2.7 billion worth of goods and services cross the border each day.

Mr. Trump has said that he would reconsider his tariff threat if Canada made improvements in managing security at the Canada-U.S. border, which he and his advisers see as a potential entry point for undocumented migrants.

Mr. Trudeau has said that less than 1% of illegal immigrants and fentanyl cross into the U.S. from Canada.

But after a meeting last November with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the president-elect’s private club and residence in Florida, Mr. Trudeau announced an increase in spending on border security, expressing willingness to address Mr. Trump’s concerns in hopes that he would reconsider his tariff threat.

With the challenge of Mr. Trump’s second administration looming and Mr. Trudeau’s party trailing badly in the polls, the beleaguered Canadian prime minister announced his resignation last Monday (January 6, 2025). He will be replaced on March 9, when his Liberal party is set to pick a new leader.

Palm Beach:

Justin Trudeau had an “excellent conversation” with Donald Trump at the president-elect’s Florida estate, Canada’s prime minister said Saturday, as the United States’ neighbors scramble to blunt the impact of Trump’s trade threats.

Trudeau flew for a dinner at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, after Trump earlier this week announced plans for import tariffs against Canada and Mexico and rival China.

“It was an excellent conversation,” Trudeau told reporters Saturday morning as he was leaving a hotel in West Palm Beach to catch a flight back to Canada.

Trudeau was the latest high-profile guest of Trump, whose impending second term — which starts in January — is already overshadowing the last few months of President Joe Biden’s administration.

A photograph released by Pennsylvania Senator-elect David McCormick showed Trump and Trudeau side-by-side at table, surrounded by a dozen guests including Howard Lutnick, Donald Trump’s pick for commerce secretary, and Mike Waltz, his choice for national security advisor.

In a social media post on Monday, Trump said he would slap a 25 percent tariff on Mexico and Canada, accusing the two US neighbors of allowing an “invasion” of the United States by illicit drugs, namely fentanyl, and undocumented migrants.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke with Trump by phone on Wednesday, though the two leaders’ accounts of the conversation differed drastically.

Trump claimed that Mexico’s left-wing president had “agreed to stop migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”

Sheinbaum later said she had discussed US-supported anti-migration policies that have long been in place in Mexico.

She said that after that, the talks had no longer revolved around the threat of tariff hikes, downplaying the risk of a trade war.

Billions in trade

Biden warned that same day that Trump’s tariff threats could “screw up” Washington’s relationships with Ottawa and Mexico City.

“I think it’s a counterproductive thing to do,” Biden told reporters.

For Canada, the stakes of any new tariffs are high.

More than three-quarters of Canadian exports, or Can$592.7 billion ($423 billion), went to the United States last year, and nearly two million Canadian jobs are dependent on trade.

A Canadian government source told AFP that Canada is considering possible retaliatory tariffs against the United States.

Some analysts have suggested Trump’s tariff threat may be bluster, or an opening salvo in future trade negotiations. But Trudeau rejected those views when he spoke with reporters earlier in Prince Edward Island province.

“Donald Trump, when he makes statements like that, he plans on carrying them out,” Trudeau said. “There’s no question about it.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)