‘Very dumb thing to do’: Trudeau after US imposes 25% tariffs

The prime minister added that Canada would challenge the US tariffs at the World Trade Organization and through the free trade agreement covering the two countries. Canada has already retaliated with tariffs on C$30bn worth of US goods and has threatened to impose further levies of C$125bn in 21 days’ time.

“Our tariffs will remain in place until the US tariffs are withdrawn, and not a moment sooner. And should these tariffs not cease, we are in active and ongoing discussions with provinces and territories to pursue several non-tariff measures, measures which will demonstrate that there are no winners in a trade war,” Trudeau said.

Trudeau also said that he did not believe Donald Trump’s insistence that tariffs were imposed in retaliation for Canada’s failure to combat fentanyl trafficking.

“We have laid out extensive plans, actions, cooperations, including as recently as the past days in Washington, and they have always been very well received, and the numbers bear that out,” the prime minister said.

“I think in what President Trump said yesterday, that there is nothing Canada or Mexico can do to avoid these tariffs, underlines very clearly what I think a lot of us have suspected for a long time, that these tariffs are not specifically about fentanyl, even though that is the legal justification he must use to actually move forward with these tariffs.”

Trudeau went on to accuse Trump of seeking to destroy the Canadian economy to make the country easier to annex – something he insisted was “never going to happen”.

“What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that will make it easier to annex us, is the second half of his thought. Now, first of all, that’s never going to happen. We will never be the 51st state, but yeah, he can do damage to the Canadian economy, and he started this morning,” Trudeau said.

The prime minister warned that Americans will suffer in the trade war as well, “As American families are going to find out, that’s going to hurt people on both sides of the border. Americans will lose jobs, Americans will be paying more for groceries, for gas, for cars, for homes, because we have always done best when we work together. So we are, of course, open to starting negotiations on the customer review, but let us not fool ourselves about what he seems to be wanting.”

From the homepage

‘I will not call it a mishap’: Assam CM Himanta calls Zubeen Garg’s death a ‘murder’

Hoardings to keep out pastors in Chhattsigarh villages: Kerala-based church calls it ‘most divisive boundary since Partition’

Her grit, Her game, Her glory: From Harmanpreet Kaur to Shafali Verma, meet India’s 16 pioneering World Cup winners