Canada hits back with juice tariff

OTTAWA: Canada hit back at the US with retaliatory tariffs on American summertime essentials, including Florida orange juice, ketchup and Kentucky bourbon, in its opening salvo in a trade war with President Donald Trump.

As temperatures and tensions increase, the measures targeting Canadian dollar 16.6 billion (USD 12.6 billion) in US steel, aluminum and consumer goods will take effect on Sunday, when Canadians celebrate a national holiday and just days before Americans celebrate Independence Day amid a heatwave expected in both countries.

The tit-for-tat duties are a response to the punishing US steel and aluminum tariffs imposed at the start of June.

Ottawa “had no choice but to announce reciprocal countermeasures to the steel and aluminum tariffs that the United States imposed on June 1, 2018,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Trump in a call on Friday, according to a statement from his office.

Foreign minister Chrystia Freeland announced the tariffs at a steel facility in Hamilton where she was flanked by workers in yellow hardhats. “We will not escalate and we will not back down,” she said, while noting that this trade action was the strongest Ottawa has taken since World War II.

But she said the move was made with “regret” and “very much in sorrow, not in anger” against a close ally.

TARIFFS ALSO IMPOSED ON KETCHUP, KENTUCKY BOURBON IN CANADA’S OPENING SALVO IN A TRADE WAR WITH TRUMP