TARIFF relief possible

Canada may get a special “carve-out” allowing it to avoid controversial U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs, the White House suggested

Canada may get a special “carve-out” allowing it to avoid the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial steel and aluminum tariffs, a White House spokeswoman suggested Wednesday.

After days of drama and a last-minute diplomatic scramble, the White House is now hinting that the impending tariff announcement might have some particular exceptions based on national-security considerations for the U.S. neighbours.

“There are potential carveouts for Canada and Mexico based on national security — and possibly other countries as well, based on that process,” Sarah Sanders said during her daily media briefing.

“That would be a case-bycase and country-by-country basis.”

The formal tariff announcement could come as early as today.

Intense debates have been going on within the Trump administration about whether to offer any exemptions — some want a hardline approach where the tariffs apply to every country; some want the opposite, meaning full relief for Canada and other allies.

And this week the administration has been hinting at a possible middleof-the road approach: temporary relief for Canada and Mexico, with the threat of tariffs as a U.S. negotiating weapon at the NAFTA bargaining table.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he wants to withhold judgment until the final details are out.

“We know from experience that we need to wait and see what this president is actually going to do,” Trudeau said during a news conference.

“There’s many discussions on this going on in the United States right now. We are going to make sure we’re doing everything we need to do to protect Canadian workers — and that means waiting to see what the president actually does.”

A full-court, 11th-hour diplomatic press was underway Wednesday.

It occurred in Ottawa, Washington, New York and even in Texas, where a number of Canadian officials were reaching out to American peers — some of whom had been pleading the Canadian case.

The fact that Canada might be hit with tariffs had actually become a leading talking point for critics bashing the Trump plan. From Capitol Hill, to cable TV, to the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, numerous commentators ridiculed the idea of a supposed national-security tariff applied to Canada.

A poll this week suggested the measures are unpopular.

In the final diplomatic push, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke with congressional leader Paul Ryan, and Canadian Ambassador David MacNaughton was to dine Wednesday with U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan chatted with Pentagon counterpart James Mattis, UN ambassador Marc-Andre Blanchard spoke with U.S. counterpart Nikki Haley, and Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr raised the issue with Energy Secretary Rick Perry at a conference in Texas.

Trudeau, meanwhile, spoke with the president this week.

A source familiar with the lastminute scramble likened it to a high-stakes, reality-show contest, with a drama-courting U.S. president at the centre of the production: “(It’s a) last-episodeof-‘The-Apprentice’ kind of thing.”

Canada is the No. 1 exporter of steel and aluminum into the U.S., which is looking to impose tariffs under a rarely used nationalsecurity provision in a 1962 law.