Canada imposes tit-for-tat duties
OTTAWA: Canada hit back at the United States on Friday 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 C$16.6 billion (RM50.40 billion) in US steel, aluminium and consumer goods will take effect yesterday, 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 aluminium tariffs imposed at the start of June.
“Ottawa had no choice but to announce reciprocal countermeasures to the steel and aluminium tariffs that the US imposed on June 1 2018,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Trump in a call on Friday.
Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the tariffs at a steel facility in Hamilton, Ontario, where she was flanked by brawny 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.
The list of more than 250 US goods subject to Canadian duties — including Florida juice, Wisconsin toilet paper and North Carolina gherkins, which are labour intensive to produce — aim to pressure Trump supporters key states in November’s US midterm elections.
The penalties will add 25 percent to the cost of US steel, and 10 per cent to aluminium and consumer goods.