Alberta Premier Danielle Smith discusses Canada’s investment in securing their southern border and her willingness to work with Trump on “The Big Money Show.”
OTTAWA, Canada – President-elect Donald Trump said, “We don’t need their cars. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need their dairy products,” referring to Canada at the conference his press conference at Mar-a-Lago recently. week, when he reiterated his views on annexation for the US’s northern neighbor and his plan to impose a “serious” and “substantial” tariff on it, which he has said would amount to 25% for Canadian exports.
The US depends on trade with Canada, which provides 60% of US crude oil imports. Last July, production reached a record 4.3 million barrels per day.
“Who has the critical minerals? We do,” Doug Ford, the premier of Canada’s largest province, Ontario, said in an interview. “Who has the high-grade nickel – which the US needs for production and for the military? We have it.”
According to the US Census Bureau, the US exported more than $322 billion in goods to Canada between January and November 2024. During the same period, the US imported over $377 billion in goods from Canada, resulting in a trade deficit of nearly $55 billion .
TRUMP SAYS US SUBSIDY TO CANADA MAKES ‘NONELESS’, SUGGESTS CANADIANS WANT TO ‘BECOME THE 51ST STATE’
Then-President Trump, left, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attend the NATO summit at the Grove Hotel on December 4, 2019 in Watford, England. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) / Getty Images)
Trump has repeatedly mentioned the US subsidy to Canada, which has increased from $100 million to $100 billion to “about $200 billion a year,” as he said at his latest press conference in March. a-Lago.
Almost $2.7 billion in goods and services cross the Canada-US border every day, and Canada is the top export destination for 36 US states. Canada is deeply dependent on this economic partnership, with 75% of its exports destined for the US, University of Ottawa international business professor Tyler Chamberlin told FOX Business.
“Trade represents 67% of Canada’s economy,” he said. By comparison, according to World Bank data, foreign trade represented 25% of gross domestic product or the US economy in 2023.
“Anything related to trade has an amplified impact on us compared to the United States, so the proposed tariffs are concerning to Canadians,” Chamberlin said. “It would be the biggest hit of all time.” He added that Americans should also be concerned.
“U.S. industries that rely on supplies coming from Canada will have to pay more for their products because of any tariffs placed on them,” Chamberlin said.
Reuters recently reported that Trump is considering using the International Economic Emergency Powers Act to declare a national economic emergency to justify imposing tariffs on Canada.
CANADA’S TRUDEAU ANNOUNCES RESIGNATION AFTER PARTY PRESSURE Amid CRITICISMS OF TRUMP, HANDLING OF BUDGET
President-elect Donald Trump announced on Monday his intention to impose significant tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico on their goods entering the United States because of the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs across the border. (Allison Robbert-Pool/Getty Images/Getty Images)
On the same day, Ontario’s premier floated an idea that could avert Trump’s planned punitive measure against Canada. The Ford government unveiled Fortress Am-Can, which aims to achieve “energy security and the power of US-Canadian economic growth on both sides of the border”.
Energy accounts for about a third of Canada’s trade with the US. The plan includes streamlining approvals for pipelines as well as large and small modular nuclear reactors. However, Ford told FOX Business that Ontario is also ready to take retaliatory measures “that will really send a message to the U.S.” in response to the imposition of sweeping U.S. tariffs.
He and his fellow Canadian prime ministers will meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this Wednesday in Ottawa to discuss next steps.
Trudeau on Friday told CNN if Trump moves forward with tariffs, Canada will respond as it did when Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum several years ago. “We responded by putting tariffs on Heinz ketchup, on playing cards, on bourbon, on Harley-Davidson, on things that would hurt American workers,” he explained.
CBC News reported last week that the retaliatory tariffs could target steel products — made in the key states of Michigan and Pennsylvania — along with orange juice made in Trump’s home state of Florida, according to a senior, unnamed U.S. source. Canadian government.
Energy exports could also be used as leverage to dissuade the incoming Trump administration from imposing tariffs against Canada.
An oil pump jack pumps oil in a field near Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on July 21, 2014. (REUTERS/Todd Korol/File Photo/Reuters Photos)
Last month, Ontario’s premier threatened to cut Ontario’s power supply to several US states, including New York, Michigan and Minnesota. According to its spokeswoman, Grace Lee, Ontario supplied energy to 1.5 million homes in the US in 2023.
Next month, Ford and his provincial and territorial colleagues will travel to Washington, DC and meet with US lawmakers in an effort to stop the tariffs.
WHO IS PIERRE POILIEVRE? CANADA’S CONSERVATIVE LEADER SEEKS TO BE NEXT PRIME MINISTER AFTER TRUDEAU EXITS
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith met with Trump over the weekend.
“We had a friendly and constructive conversation during which I emphasized the mutual importance of the US-Canada energy relationship, and specifically, how hundreds of thousands of American jobs are supported by energy exports from Alberta. I have also been able to have similar discussions with several key allies of the incoming administration and was encouraged to hear their support for a strong energy and security relationship with Canada,” she told X.
Before the meeting, former Canadian cabinet minister Perrin Beatty, who most recently served as president and chief executive of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said Trudeau should have done what Smith and Ford did to present Canada’s position and to “build a constituency. in the United States and ensure that Americans are aware of how it is in their interest to maintain a strong relationship with Canada.”
An independent panel of experts on Canada-US relations, which Beatty co-chairs, has called for a “Canada-First” response to Trump and that “Canada cannot simply bow to his every whim and demand “, said in a statement.
The group said Canada should instead push “the new administration to act on areas that are important to our country, including curbing the flow of drugs and weapons from the US to Canada.”
An Air Canada plane flies past the downtown skyline and the CN Tower as it lands at Pearson International Airport on December 10, 2023 in Toronto. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images/Getty Images)
Beyond the issue of tariffs, Canada must prepare for the renegotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the 2020 successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Beatty — who served in the cabinet of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government that helped create NAFTA’s predecessor, the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, with the Reagan administration — said this time next year, The Trump White House is expected to inform Congress that it wants to renegotiate the USMCA over the next decade.
Last October, Trump said that “upon taking office,” he would notify Canada and Mexico of his “intention to invoke the six-year USMCA renegotiation provision that I put in place,” and as he told the FOX Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo in an interview, “make it a much better deal.”
‘TANK-SHARK’ STAR KEVIN O’LEARY BACKS TRUMP’S IDEA TO MAKE CANADA 51ST US STATE: ‘POTENTIAL IS MASSIVE’
Trucks line up on the Blue Water Bridge connecting Port Huron, Michigan, and Sarnia, Canada, in Port Huron, Michigan, on February 10, 2022. (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Beatty, a former Canadian foreign minister, said Trump’s references to a trade imbalance between the U.S. and Canada “consist largely of selling Canadian energy to the U.S. at a discount to world prices.”
“Instead of the US subsidizing Canada by buying this energy, Canada is subsidizing the US because of our government’s failure to put the infrastructure in place to allow us to properly serve global markets,” Beatty said.
Beatty, who also served as Canada’s defense minister, noted that Canada and the US are security partners in the North American Aerospace Defense Command and share a partnership in the defense industrial base. “When Mr. Trump hurts our economy, he is also hurting the security of the United States in the process,” Beatty said.
According to him, the past should guide the future.
A Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. train car. at the Canadian Pacific Railway Toronto Yard in Toronto on Tuesday, August 20, 2024. (Cole Burston/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
Beatty referred to the Tariff Act—commonly known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which Congress passed in 1930—that implemented protectionist trade policies. Canada was the first country to respond by imposing new tariffs on 16 products, which accounted for about 30% of US exports to Canada.
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“Smoot-Hawley did not cause the Great Depression,” Beatty said. But she extended it and deepened it.”
“We don’t learn from history unfortunately,” he said, “In a trade war, there are no winners. There are only losers.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
