Canada Ready To Hit Back At Trump’s Tariffs

OTTAWA — President Donald Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on Canadian goods is drawing an immediate response as Ottawa responds with levies on U.S. products targeting Republican-led states, including Florida oranges and appliances from Ohio.

The Canadian response to the U.S. trade action set to take effect Tuesday has been in the works for weeks since Trump first announced his intention on Feb. 1 to upend decades of trade cooperation between the two nations.

Canada is now poised to hit the U.S. with 25 percent tariffs on C$30 billion of U.S. goods, and the threat of C$125 billion more after a 21-day consultation period. The list of what would get tariffed immediately includes food — poultry, beef, fish, yogurt and more — along with various textiles and furniture.

Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said thousands of Canadian jobs are at stake.

“We are ready with C$155 billion worth of tariffs,” she told reporters on her way into a Cabinet meeting, referring to the two-pronged tariff retaliation plan.

Joly said she and her Cabinet colleagues spent Monday reaching out one more time to their Trump counterparts to head off the economic damage of the tariffs. Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc spoke with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford also said he is ready to fight.

“If they want to try to annihilate Ontario, I will do everything, including cut off their energy with a smile on my face,” he said Monday. “I’m encouraging every other province to do the same.” Ontario exports electricity to 1.5 million Americans.

Trump broke the news while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Air Force jetliner was airborne to Ottawa from London, where he met earlier in the day with King Charles III and following Sunday’s Ukraine solidarity summit with European leaders.

“No room left for Mexico or for Canada. The tariffs, you know, they’re all set. They go into effect tomorrow,” Trump said Monday afternoon, kicking the feet out from under one of the most intensive Canadian political advocacy efforts that has ever targeted the U.S. capitol.

States that will feel Ottawa’s retaliation include Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and many more that have Republican leadership and where voters helped bring Trump to power on his promise to reduce their cost of living. One government source said potential tariff targets include coffee from House Speaker Mike Johnson’s home state of Louisiana, along with anything from Pennsylvania, a key swing state that turned the election for Trump.

Candace Laing, the president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said Trump’s decision would plunge Canada and the U.S. into a job-killing recession.

“Tariffs are a tax on the American people. Rather than bringing back affordability or creating a 'golden age' for business, tariffs will cost consumers at the checkout, cost producers more at every point along the supply chain, and force businesses to find alternate suppliers that are less reliable than Canadian ones,” Laing said in a statement to POLITICO.

“The U.S. can claim this policy is about hitting Canada where it hurts, but it will soon see the disastrous impacts at home in cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh and Louisville,” she said.

Canada’s retaliation will be the sword to the proverbial carrot that saw Ottawa lawmakers and Canada’s premiers spending weeks shuttling back and forth to Capitol Hill with the message that tariffs on Canada will also hurt Americans.

The intense, widespread lobbying aimed at Trump’s incoming Cabinet, lawmakers in Congress, state-level politicians and business leaders was an attempt to demonstrate that Ottawa was taking Trump at his word: that Canada could avoid tariffs if they could show a reduction in the flow of fentanyl and illegal migrants into the U.S. from Canada.

Less than 1 percent of those illicit drugs and people currently enter the U.S. Nonetheless, Canada spent C$1.3 billion on a border security plan that included Black Hawk helicopter deployments, other surveillance and more border officials on the ground.

The list of officials deployed to D.C. to head off the tariffs was long and included LeBlanc, Defense Minister Bill Blair and Kevin Brosseau, Canada’s newly appointed “fentanyl czar.”

In the end, nothing they said mattered.

“We know that we've answered questions that the Trump administration had regarding our efforts,” said Joly of the border measures.

It is about far more than the border for Trump, it is about reshoring manufacturing to America — part of his promise of delivering on a new “golden age.” The heart of that pledge is the coveted and highly integrated automobile sector that both countries established through an Auto Pact inked 60 years ago — the precursor to free trade deals followed decades later.

Trump suggested Monday one way to avoid tariffs is to build business in America.

“I would just say this to people in Canada or Mexico, if they're going to build car plants, the people that are doing them are much better off building here, because we have the market. We're the market where they sell the most. And so I think it's going to be very exciting,” he said.

The auto sector is literally the engine of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, its premier pledged in his typically colorful language to protect those jobs.

“To the president: I’m a different type of cat. I’ll fight tooth and nail. I’m not going to roll over and get annihilated,” Ford said.

Flavio Volpe, the president of Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, has predicted tariffs could cripple the North American auto industry within a week.

“We know that the president never backs off during press conferences. I’m still hopeful that when we see it in writing, some of it will have a relationship with math, science and the truth,” Volpe told POLITICO on Monday.

Miller told POLITICO last week that although meetings with individual Washington lawmakers felt productive, there was a sense of futility to the blitz.

“No matter who you meet at the highest level, what is quite clear is that the decision ultimately is made by the president — and it can change.”