Prime Minister Mark Carney stated that Ottawa and Beijing reached an agreement to reduce certain mutual tariffs last week
U.S. President Donald Trump has announced he will place a 100% tariff on all Canadian imports if Ottawa moves forward with a trade deal with China. This warning came as Trump alleged Beijing is trying to take advantage of Canada to get around U.S. trade restrictions.
Trump has used tariffs—or the threat of them—before in trade conflicts with several nations, including Canada. His administration has imposed various taxes on Canadian exports. Last year, Ottawa and Washington were near a deal to lower some of those tariffs, but negotiations eventually fell apart. Trump has since repeated he’s ready to increase tariffs on Canadian products, though no new measures have taken effect.
“If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the USA,” Trump warned in a Saturday post on his Truth Social platform.
“If Governor Carney thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken,” Trump said regarding Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, using a nickname he’d coined when calling for America’s northern neighbor to become the 51st U.S. state.
Earlier this month, Carney visited China to repair tense relations and struck what Canadian officials describe as a preliminary agreement or strategic partnership focused on specific trade barriers—not a comprehensive free trade deal.
Ties between Washington and Ottawa have worsened further in recent weeks following Carney’s criticism of Trump’s pursuit of Greenland, which the U.S. president has said he wants to turn into a U.S. territory.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Carney declared the rules-based global order is over and argued that “middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”
Trump responded during his own Davos speech by stating Canada “lives because of the United States,” a claim Carney dismissed. Trump later uninvited Carney from his proposed ‘Board of Peace’, an organization he says would handle international conflicts.