Canada announces billions in retaliatory tariffs vs US
TORONTO — Canada announced billions of dollars in retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. on Friday in a tit-for-tat response to the Trump administration's duties on Canadian steel and aluminum.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government released the final list of items that will be targeted beginning July 1. Some items will be subject to taxes of 10 or 25 percent.
"As he has said in past conversations and in public, the Prime Minister conveyed that Canada has had no choice but to announce reciprocal countermeasures to the steel and aluminum tariffs that the United States imposed on June 1, 2018," Trudeau's office said in a statement.
Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump spoke late Friday. It was their first direct conversation since Trump tweeted that Trudeau was "weak" and "dishonest" after leaving the G-7 meetings in Quebec earlier this month.
Trudeau also spoke to Mexican President Enrique Pena Neito and updated him on Canada's response to the U.S tariffs.
The taxes on items including ketchup, lawn mowers and motor boats amount to $12.6 billion. "We will not escalate and we will not back down," Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said, adding they had no other choice and called the tariffs regrettable.
Many of the U.S. products were chosen for their political rather than economic impact. For example, Canada imports just $3 million worth of yogurt from the U.S. annually and most of it comes from one plant in Wisconsin, the home state of House Speaker Paul Ryan. The product will now be hit with a 10 percent duty.
"This is a perfectly reciprocal action," Freeland said. "It is a dollar for dollar response." Another product on the list is whiskey, which comes from Tennessee and Kentucky, the latter of which is the home state of Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell.
Freeland also said they are prepared if Trump escalates the trade war. "It is absolutely imperative that common sense should prevail," she said. "Having said that our approach from day one of the NAFTA negotiations has been to hope for the best but prepare for the worst."