Will Canada face higher U.S. tariffs if no trade deal by Friday?
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Toronto Sun
20 minutes ago
- Toronto Sun
Canada weighs retaliation cost against Trump tariffs as analysts warn hitting back isn't worth it
Published Aug 02, 2025 • Last updated 10 minutes ago • 4 minute read Tractor trailers entering the U.S. from Canada at the Pacific Highway Border Crossing in Blaine, Washington, on Monday, March 3, 2025. Photo by David Ryder / Bloomberg Canada's decision to retaliate against U.S. tariffs earlier this year appears to be driving a divergence in how President Donald Trump is dealing with America's neighbours. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Until this week, Canada and Mexico received similar treatment in White House trade actions. Each was subject to a 25% base tariff, with a large exemption for goods shipped under the North American free trade pact known as CUSMA (or USMCA). That changed on Thursday, when Trump granted Mexico a 90-day pause on tariff hikes while jacking up its tax on Canadian products to 35%. The administration said Canada's higher rate was a response to fentanyl trafficking and its moves to hit back with counter-tariffs. The situation leaves Prime Minister Mark Carney with a political dilemma. On one hand, he won an election by promising a muscular approach to the trade war, saying the government would use tariffs to cause 'maximum pain' in the US. His voters remember that, and some want him to punch back. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Yet the retaliatory measures already undertaken failed to prevent further escalations. Instead, they appear to have emboldened Trump's team to hit even harder. U.S. administration officials including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick frequently talk about how only two countries retaliated against Trump's tariffs — the other was China. 'Canada's retaliatory trade measures against the United States further complicate bilateral efforts to address this escalating drug crisis,' the White House said in a fact sheet, referencing fentanyl. But Mexico is a much larger source of shipments of the drug into the U.S., according to Customs and Border Protection data. Carney, an economist and former central banker, has also made it plain he believes retaliation can only go so far. In fact, his government has watered down Canada's counter-tariffs with a number of exemptions, declined to increase them when the U.S. lifted steel and aluminum tariffs to 50% and scrapped a tax on technology services at Trump's request. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Dominic LeBlanc, the minister in charge of trade talks, told Radio-Canada on Friday the government hasn't made any decisions about further retaliation. But Carney is clearly reluctant to do so — which 'reflects the reality that counter-tariffs are understood to be economically harmful to the country which imposes them,' said David Collins, a professor specializing in international trade at City St George's, University of London. The government's priority is to keep the CUSMA carve-out that dramatically lowers the real tax on Canadian goods. The effective U.S. tariff rate on Canada is about 6.3%, according to Bank of Nova Scotia economists. 'A more diplomatic approach is likely to bear more fruit with the Americans,' Collins said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Canada imposed two rounds of counter-tariffs in March, when Justin Trudeau was in his final days as prime minister. The first placed 25% levies on about $30 billion of imports from the U.S. that included food items, clothing and motorcycles. The second came when Trump put tariffs on steel and aluminum. Then, when Trump added tariffs to foreign automobiles, Carney essentially matched that move, imposing similar fees on U.S. cars and trucks. But in mid-April, the government unveiled a series of exemptions for business inputs — goods imported for use in manufacturing and food packaging, as well as things needed for health care, public safety and security. Automakers such as General Motors Co. and Honda Motor Co. that make vehicles at Canadian plants were also made eligible for relief from import taxes. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The large majority of U.S. products can still enter Canada tariff-free. U.S. companies and other entities exported about $440 billion of goods and services to Canada last year — more than to any other nation. For Canada, 'the logic for escalation over cooperation is just weak,' said Oliver Lavelle, global macro strategist at Thiel Macro LLC. Mexico's Way Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, in contrast, has never imposed counter-tariffs on the U.S. Sheinbaum's position is also supported by her high approval ratings, which have remained above 75% in most polls. 'It's worth saying: President Trump treats us with respect in all the calls we've had, and we do too,' she said during a new conference. 'We may not agree, but the treatment is respectful.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. A statement issued late Thursday night by Carney's office expressed disappointment in Trump's tariff hike on Canada, but made no mention of retaliation. A spokesperson for Carney declined to comment further. LeBlanc said he met with Lutnick on Tuesday night, and that Canadian officials held other meetings throughout the week, but a deal acceptable to both sides 'was not yet visible.' In his statement, Carney acknowledged that lumber, steel, aluminum and autos are still subject to U.S. levies, and said his government 'will act to protect Canadian jobs, invest in our industrial competitiveness, buy Canadian, and diversify its export markets.' 'Jitters' But while the CUSMA exemption gives Canada some breathing room, the sectoral tariffs on steel and aluminum are still harmful and will affect economic growth if they're in place for long, Collins said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, said the idea that Canada is getting off lightly is 'both overstated and potentially premature.' Canadian industries are more reliant on U.S. exports than their overseas competitors, and Trump could also chose to weaken the CUSMA exemption at any time, he said in a note to investors. 'We are still hopeful for a deal that relieves at least some of the pressure on base metal exporters,' Shenfeld said. 'But whether any of this lasts will depend on Trump's word, and we've seen how shaky that foundation can be, leaving jitters that could impact business capital spending and confidence ahead.' —With assistance from Mario Baker Ramirez and Carolina Millan. Read More Toronto Blue Jays Columnists Columnists Toronto & GTA Canada
Toronto Sun
an hour ago
- Toronto Sun
KINSELLA: Mark Carney's words can have real-life impacts for Jews
And sometimes pronouncements from world leaders, such as Canada's Prime Minister, can have deadly consequences Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (R), flanked by Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, speaks during a press conference after a Cabinet meeting to discuss both trade negotiations with the US and the situation in the Middle East, at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa on July 30, 2025. Photo by DAVE CHAN / AFP via Getty Images Canada, France and the United Kingdom recognize a 'state' run by terrorists. Canada's Prime Minister accuses Israel of violating international law. The International Criminal Court issues warrants for the arrest of Israel's Prime Minister. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Sometimes, such pronouncements made by governments seem completely detached from reality. None of those countries have yet set up an embassy in Gaza City, for example. Nor has Canada commenced a court action against Israel. No country, as far as we know, has attempted to place Benjamin Netanyahu under arrest. But it would be a mistake to shrug about the pronouncements of world leaders, or to dismiss their words as meaningless symbols. For Jews, these dark days, words can have real-life impacts. Sometimes, the consequences can be deadly. CyberWell is an Internet watchdog that closely tracks antisemitism on social media. When the Israel-based non-profit finds hate online, it notifies the social media platforms, and urges them to take it down. And two recent reports by CyberWell show that the words and actions of governments can, and do, result in shocking eruptions in cyber-hate. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. A recent example: the twelve-day war between Israel, the United States and Iran took place in June 2025. That conflict saw Israel launch hundreds of airstrikes against the Islamic republic – and Iran firing thousands of ballistic missiles and suicide drones at Israeli military and civilian targets. Israel was largely seen as the victor. Read More Online, the abbreviated Iran-Israel war had a very different outcome. Online, Iran was the hands-down victor. During and after the conflict, CyberWell found, and 'across platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and X, users once again used digital spaces to post antisemitic rhetoric, incitement to violence, and coded hate speech – at times under the guise of political commentary or religious solidarity.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. It's not a new phenomenon, CyberWell notes, and it's getting worse all the time: 'Each new flashpoint acts as a trigger for dangerous digital discourse that can quickly spill into real-world harm.' For example: during the Iran-Israel war, the words 'Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews' were all over social media, in the Farsi and Arabic languages. The phrase refers to a long-ago battle in Khaybar, which was a Jewish town in what is now Saudi Arabia – and where Muslim forces massacred the Jewish population. The 'Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews' slogan has been used, for centuries, to call for pogroms against Jews. On X, as the war commenced, that hateful phrase grew by more than 3,000% over the previous months. Midway through the conflict, it increased by nearly 7,000% over before. By the end of the war, those words had reached three million individual accounts. The Farsi version of the chant far outpaced the Arabic one, too. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Some of the posters were very specific. After activist Eyal Yakoby simply posted a photo of an Israeli apartment building destroyed by an Iranian missile, '@pratynachiyar' wrote: 'Kill everyone from Israel, Iran, good job buddy…let these Jew f**kers leave Earth permanently.' A June 14, 2025, post by activist Eyal Yakoby on X that included a photo of an Israeli apartment building destroyed by an Iranian missile led to a hateful post against Jews by @pratynachiyar. Photo by Posted on X And, tragically, killings were indeed happening. As the Jew hatred was growing dramatically online – as more and more governments were showing a willingness to isolate and attack the Jewish state – actual murders happened. So, just days before the war started, two young Israeli embassy staffers were assassinated outside the Capital Jewish Museum – and the alleged shooter yelled 'Free Palestine' as he was arrested by police. Days later, an elderly Jewish woman died after being set ablaze in Boulder, Colorado – again, by an alleged killer who reportedly yelled 'Free Palestine' – a phrase that was, and is, ubiquitous online. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. As CyberWell puts it: 'These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a dangerous, recurring cycle that CyberWell has repeatedly warned about: inflammatory content spreads online, fuelling real-world hate and violence. Each act of violence or hate speech online reinforces the next, creating a self-perpetuating loop.' The 'loop,' as CyberWell puts it, has recently gone like this: witless Western governments demonize Israel, which leads to antisemitic propagandists doing likewise online, which then legitimizes – and leads to – actual antisemitic crime and violence. It needs to stop. Police and prosecutors need to get better at fighting antisemitic crime. Social media platforms need to do a better job of moderating what's being posted online. And governments, like Canada's, need to recognize that what they say can sometimes result in real-life harm. Sometimes, in fact, it can result in death. Toronto Blue Jays Columnists Canada Sunshine Girls Toronto & GTA
Toronto Sun
an hour ago
- Toronto Sun
JONAH GOLDBERG: Why MAGA's ideologues can't always get what they want
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, July 16, 2025. Photo by Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images MAGA has a problem, in the form of Donald Trump. Put simply: MAGA wants to define what MAGA (or 'America first') means, and Trump wants it to mean whatever he says at any given moment. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account I should offer a little definitional clarity and political nuance. Make America Great Again means different things to different people. The Trump coalition is not monolithic, it contains factions that do not necessarily consider themselves to be MAGA. But as shorthand, MAGA is an identifiably distinct bloc on the right, and it's the dominant faction in the broader GOP coalition. Its internal diversity notwithstanding, it still has a worldview or ideology. And the MAGA faithful are increasingly frustrated by the fact that Trump doesn't always share, or prioritize, that ideology. They believed that if you could just 'let Trump be Trump' he would follow their conception of MAGA. In Ronald Reagan's first term, many movement conservatives were frustrated by what they perceived as the Gipper's drift toward centrism. They blamed moderates in the administration. 'Let Reagan be Reagan' became a rallying cry on the right. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'It's a piece of conventional wisdom on the new American right that Donald Trump struggled in his first term because he hired the wrong people — old-think Bush Republicans, figures like Rex Tillerson and Steven Mnuchin, who didn't have a populist bone in their bodies,' news website Semafor's Ben Smith offers in an astute analysis. As a result, Smith continues, 'Trump's most passionate supporters weren't going to make that mistake again. They created initiatives like American Moment, Project 2025, and others aimed at grooming and credentialing a cadre of MAGA appointees. When Trump took office, the America Firsters moved en masse into the Department of Defense. Big Tech avengers seized the antitrust apparatus. Conspiracy-minded podcasters took over the FBI. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'And yet — just as Trump often ignored his conventional advisers in the first term, he's stunned loyalists by sweeping aside this carefully assembled apparat in 2025.' Trump said as much to the Atlantic magazine last month: 'I think I'm the one that decides' what 'America first' means. 'It turns out that personnel isn't policy,' the executive director of the American Conservative, Curt Mills, 'glumly' told Smith. The idea that 'personnel is policy' is another Reagan-era mantra; put Reaganites in important positions and you'll get Reaganite policies. Putting Trumpists in powerful positions doesn't yield the same results. Immigration hawks have been panicking over the president's suggestion that farm and hotel workers should be excluded from his deportation schemes. As Trump told Fox News, 'I'm on both sides of the thing.' Foreign policy 'restrainers' were beclowned by his support of Israel's strikes on Iran and his apparent about-face on helping Ukraine. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. On China, Trump's been a hawk as promised, except when he hasn't, allowing Nvidia to sell chips to China, and ignoring the law by refusing to sell or shutter TikTok. Then there's the Jeffrey Epstein fiasco, which has bedeviled Trump for weeks. It's intensity and durability can best be explained by the fact that it divides those who define Trumpism as loyalty to Trump and those who believe that loyalty would be, must be rewarded by a cleansing of corrupt globalist elite — or something. In short, there is no 'Trumpism' that is an analogue to Reaganism. Reaganism is a philosophical approach. What defines Trump's reign is better understood as a psychological phenomenon both as an explanation of his behaviour and of his fans' cultish and performative loyalty. To the extent Trump has a philosophy it is to follow his instincts, which are most powerfully informed first by his own ego but also the dramaturgy of professional wrestling, reality TV and Norman Vincent Peale's prosperity gospel. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. He's said many times that he considers unpredictability a virtue in itself, which by definition means he is going to disappoint anyone who expects philosophical coherence. When Trump was a bull in a china shop, the people most excited by the sound of breaking vases and dishware assumed there was a broader method to the madness. But now the same people are learning that Trump won't be saddled by his fans any more than he is by norms. This was always going to be the case (as I noted in 2017 ), but what adds to MAGA's frustration is that anyone can see and copy the bull-handling techniques that are most likely to work. Compliment him, call him 'daddy,' celebrate his genius and expertise, and you too can manipulate him with at least moderate success. Perhaps most significant, it's becoming clear that a movement defined by loyalty to a mercurial personality is bound to split apart once that personality leaves the stage — if not sooner. — Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch. Read More Toronto Blue Jays Columnists Canada Sunshine Girls Toronto & GTA
