Ottawa Imposes Retaliatory Tariffs on $28 Billion of U.S. Commodities
Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on $28-billion worth of U.S. imports took effect early Tuesday, as Prime Minister Mark Carney fired back at President Donald Trump’s trade war and braced for an expected counterpunch from Washington.
Mr. Carney’s office said Monday that there had been no eleventh-hour talks to prevent Canada from imposing the countertariffs.
Instead of negotiations over the weekend, Mr. Trump made a steady stream of derisive and insulting social media posts about Canada and floated a ban on Canadian luxury-jet maker Bombardier.
The attack on the prominent Canadian company was made only on social media, with no formal policy announcement from the White House.
Ottawa’s levies on American businesses came into force at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. They include nearly 900 items – everything from clothing and home appliances to metals and electronics.
The Canadian tariffs are in response to 50-per-cent tariffs that Mr. Trump levelled against Canada on Aug. 22. Ottawa’s levies are set mostly at 25 or 50 per cent, with a small number of goods subject to a lower 15-per-cent duty.
Canada walked away from negotiations late on Aug. 21, with Mr. Carney saying American negotiators had made unreasonable last-minute demands. No formal talks have taken place since.
Mr. Trump’s administration has promised to retaliate, meaning that Ottawa’s new countertariffs could widen the trade war, with ever-expanding economic pain for businesses and consumers on both sides of the border. And Mr. Trump has already said that he would double auto tariffs to 50 per cent from 25 per cent as of Jan. 1, 2027, and have them also apply to auto parts, which have so far been exempted.
But the White House is threatening a Canadian public that polls show is primed for the fight after a year and a half of near-constant provocation from Mr. Trump. His administration has waged economic war not just on Canada but on many traditional U.S. allies.
Mr. Carney campaigned both on a promise that he could manage Mr. Trump and win at the negotiating table and on diversifying Canada’s economy. Voters rewarded him with government, and many took their own stands by boycotting the U.S. and its products.
Ahead of the latest round of U.S. tariffs, Canadian officials were in near-daily talks with their counterparts to strike a deal and avert the fresh economic pain. But rather than another bid for diplomacy in the final hours before the new Canadian levies are imposed, the President took the opposite approach.
In one post on his Truth Social website, the President shared an illustration of himself in Team USA hockey gear towering over a wincing Mr. Carney clad in Team Canada colours and telling him to “Get up, governor.”
In another, Mr. Trump posted a map that showed the U.S. flag superimposed over Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Iceland, the entire Caribbean and most of Central America. The Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment on Mr. Trump’s posts.
Mr. Carney’s spokesperson, Audrey Champoux, said there had been no conversations between the two leaders on Monday or earlier in the holiday weekend. Similarly, the offices of Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and top trade negotiator Janice Charette said there had been no talks with American officials.
The move has brought Canada into a new phase of its trade dispute with the United States. After Mr. Trump’s most recent levies, Mr. Carney said in August that the attacks amounted to war.
While the countries are fighting each other with tariffs, the dispute goes far beyond trade, said Eric Miller, an adviser on Canada-U.S. economic relations and founder of the Rideau Potomac Strategy Group.
“We’re going to be in a standoff of wills,” he said, and the two sides are “dug in.”
For Mr. Trump, this is a test of his ability to bring Canada to heel and subjugate the country to the whims of the White House, Mr. Miller said. For the Prime Minister, it’s a test of whether he, and in turn Canada, can withstand the economic pressure from a superpower and hold its own.
“The world’s watching whether Carney stands firm and gets through it or breaks,” Mr. Miller said. “The expectation is that if Carney basically stands up and survives and thrives, then it will embolden others to do the same.”
With such high stakes, Mr. Miller said he doesn’t expect a quick resolution to the impasse. The economic pain will need to take enough of a hold to force a reassessment of each country’s bottom line in future trade talks, he said.
On Monday, the President’s most substantive attack was on a Canadian company, rather than the government or a broader industrial sector.
“NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES! Their products aren’t good enough!” he wrote on his social-media platform. “If they want our Market, they must build here, and stop treating America like a “piggy bank.”
Of Bombardier’s US$9.55-billion in revenue recorded in 2025, more than 50 per cent was from the U.S. The company expects to exceed US$10-billion in revenue in 2026. Alongside its American revenues are 3,500 people employed in the U.S., meaning any attempt to damage the company by Mr. Trump would hurt workers in his own country.
Bombardier manufactures wings for its Global 8000 jet in Red Oak, Tex., and makes components for those same wings at a facility in the Los Angeles area. The company’s biggest parts-distribution hub in the world is located in Chicago.
In a statement, the company said that it was helping to drive trade surpluses in the U.S. – the single trade metric that most preoccupies Mr. Trump – by employing workers in the country and buying parts from American suppliers.
“The American aerospace industry is a clear winner on trade and exports. Bombardier is a strong contributor to the sector, creating tens of thousands of jobs across the United States. Aerospace is routinely one of the top export sectors for the United States and a continual trade surplus winner,” the company said.
In his post, Mr. Trump said Ottawa had blocked Bombardier competitor Gulfstream Aerospace “from doing business in Canada.” However, in a statement, the federal government said the company’s aircraft are and can be “freely sold and operated in Canada.”
The President has previously taken swipes at Bombardier.
In January, he accused Canada of unfair trade practices and said the U.S. would decertify all Canadian and Bombardier-made jets unless Transport Canada approved aircraft made by Gulfstream. He also threatened a 50-per cent tariff on new aircraft made in Canada.
The Canadian regulator certified key Gulfstream business-jet models for use back in February, after the brief trade dispute.
In a statement posted to social media, Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette pledged to defend Bombardier.
With no clarity on how or when this dispute will be resolved, Mr. Miller said Canada needs to prepare for a worst-case scenario of the U.S. pulling out of the North American trade pact entirely and striking a separate bilateral deal with Mexico. He said he was not predicting such an outcome, but that it was not out of the realm of possibility.
Last week, the Bank of Canada said the escalating trade war brings more uncertainty to domestic growth. Prior to the August tariffs, things had been looking up for the economy, but the sustainability of those gains was thrown into doubt as a result of the punitive economic policies, the bank said.
New polling by Nanos Research shows that Canadians are willing to withstand some economic pain in order to push back against the Trump administration. But pollster Nik Nanos cautioned that there are limits to the public support Mr. Carney enjoys.
“If we start seeing stories of small and medium-sized businesses struggling, laying off people, we don’t know how long that resolve is going to last,” said Mr. Nanos, the company’s chief data scientist.
Although they will undoubtedly raise costs for Canadian importers and consumers, countermeasures are in the national interest, said Derek Nighbor, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada.
“This is a proportionate response to what the U.S. has instigated here.” Mr. Nighbor said.
On the American side, the new Canadian tariffs were met with a muted response from the dairy industry, which wants Canada to liberalize its dairy market.
Shawna Morris, with the National Milk Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council, said her industry is disappointed by the trade standoff. But it supports the U.S. administration’s decision to “use whatever tariff authority it has to try to drive [a] resolution.”
With reports from Adrian Morrow, Nicolas Van Praet and Mark Rendell
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
