Key points
- Ready to sit down with President Trump: Carney
- Tariffs pose an existential threat to our country: Canadian FM
- Canadian officials are set to meet the US Commerce Secretary
OTTAWA, Canada: Canada’s incoming prime minister Mark Carney said Wednesday he was ready to negotiate directly with US President Donald Trump a renewed trade accord in a bid to avoid further economic tussling.
“I’m ready to sit down with President Trump at the appropriate time under a position where there’s respect for Canadian sovereignty and we’re working for a common approach, a much more comprehensive approach for trade,” Carney told steelworkers at a plant in Hamilton, Ontario.
“We are all going to be better off when the greatest economic and security partnership in the world is renewed, relaunched,” he added.
Canada and the United States, along with Mexico, are bound by a decades-old free trade agreement that was refreshed during Trump’s first term.
Trade war
But since returning to the White House, Trump has ordered tariffs on trading partners including Canada. On Wednesday, a 25 per cent levy on steel and aluminium imports into the United States took effect.
Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly, meanwhile, said at a news conference Wednesday that the tariffs pose “an existential threat to our country”, according to Anadolu Ajansi
“The excuse for these tariffs shifts every day,” she said. “The only constant in this unjustified and unjustifiable trade war seems to be President Trump’s talks of annexing our country through economic coercion.”
Canada supplies half of US aluminium imports and 20 per cent of US steel imports, according to industry consultant EY-Parthenon.
Canada’s response
Canada hit back Wednesday by announcing additional 25 per cent tariffs on Can$29.8 billion ($20.7 billion) of US goods.
This is on top of a 25 per cent tariff on US goods worth Can$30 billion that Ottawa imposed earlier this month in response to Trump’s initial round of trade levies against Canadian products.
As the verbal tensions persist, Canadian officials, including LeBlanc and Ontario Premier Doug Ford, are set to meet US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in Washington on Thursday.
LeBlanc expressed hope that he could persuade Trump to remove the tariffs and prevent the new ones that the US president plans to impose on April 2.
LeBlanc said Trump’s “outrageous comments” concerning Canadian sovereignty need to be tackled with US officials in a face-to-face meeting.
