For a fleeting moment, it looked as if Canada’s trade troubles were over. The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled on Wednesday that President Trump did not have “unbounded authority” to impose many of his tariffs, including some against Canada.
In another blow to Mr. Trump, it ordered an immediate end to collection of the tariffs.
[Read: Trump Tariffs Ruled Illegal by Federal Judicial Panel]
But then came the sobering, not-so-fine print.
The case focused on the Trump administration’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs, which for Canada is based on the false claim that large amounts of fentanyl cross the border from Canada to the United States. So the ruling affected the sweeping tariffs against Canadian exports that were imposed under that law, but it did not affect Mr. Trump’s 25 percent duties on Canadian cars, auto parts, steel and aluminum, which were imposed using other laws. (The auto parts tariff had previously been suspended.)
And products from Canada that meet minimum North American content levels under the currently tattered free trade agreement among Canada, the United States and Mexico were already exempt.
Still, Prime Minister Mark Carney told the House of Commons that he welcomed the decision. But he added, “We recognize that our trading relationship with the U.S. is still profoundly and adversely affected.”
Then, on Thursday, an appeals court paused the lower court’s ruling, allowing tariff collection to continue as it considered the case, which is expected to wind up at the United States Supreme Court.
All the back-and-forth has made a confused and uncertain trading climate even more so.
[Read: Chaos vs. Hope: America’s Trading Partners React Cautiously to Tariff Block]
[Read: Tariff Rulings Inject New Uncertainty Into Trump Trade Strategy]
[Read: Federal Appeals Court Temporarily Spares Trump From Having to Wind Down Tariffs]
[Read: U.S. Ports Grapple With On-Again, Off-Again Tariffs]
On Friday, Mr. Trump added to the uncertainty and the trade tension by announcing that he was doubling the tariff on steel and aluminum imports from several countries, including Canada, to 50 percent as of June 4.
[Read: Trump Pledges to Double Tariffs on Foreign Steel and Aluminum to 50%]
To get a fix on what the court battle could mean for Canada, I spoke with Alan Wm. Wolff, a trade law expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. Mr. Wolff previously served as deputy director general of the World Trade Organization.
Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
While it excludes the most pressing tariffs on Canada, does this decision offer Canadians any long-term hope for trade stability?
By and large, I think that the Court of International Trade decision was correctly decided and will largely hold on appeal at the federal circuit.
A question, which doesn’t help Canada very much, is: Will they look at fentanyl tariffs a little bit differently than they look at the other tariffs brought in on April 2 if they want to give the president something?
The Supreme Court has been very deferential to this president. But I don’t think they’ll be able to stomach his totally usurping Congress’s role by simply using the words “national emergency” and then saying “I can do anything I want.”
Can Mr. Trump simply turn to other laws to impose tariffs?
He has other tools. But nothing is suited to his purpose as much as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. And it’s not going to last, I think.
Is it likely that other court cases will reject his use of other laws, such those around national security, to impose tariffs?
I don’t think so. The courts are used to deferring to the president on the issue of is there a national security issue or not.
With the April 2 tariffs, he just overdid it.
Is this decision, if it’s upheld, the end for any president’s using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs?
The Court of International Trade said that the act can be used to regulate trade through tariffs.
So it’s still a live weapon. But it’s no longer everything against everybody on all products every minute of the day, as long as my Sharpie holds out and I can sign executive orders.
What should Canada do now?
I’m of the school that negotiation is a preferred alternative to retaliation.
How much does Trump need to declare victory? He has no preconceived notion of what victory is. I mean, there’s no particular objective.
Trans Canada
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Norimitsu Onishi visited the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which has straddled the international border between Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vt., since 1904. For decades, Canadians have been able to freely walk down a sidewalk in the United States to enter the library. But the United States recently announced that it would restrict that access, saying that the library’s open border policy had led to cases of smuggling and other security concerns.
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Manitoba and Saskatchewan both declared states of emergency this week as dozens of wildfires raged out of control and displaced thousands of residents. Smoke from those fires is now making its way east into southern Ontario and Quebec and parts of the United States.
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Canadian officials ordered a cull of 400 ostriches on a British Columbia farm that had been exposed to avian flu. Now Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary, and Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician who oversees Medicare and Medicaid for the Trump administration, have joined calls to save the birds, Vjosa Isai reports.
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King Charles III, whose earlier visits to Canada as heir to the throne were often met by indifference, drew respectable crowds when he dropped into Ottawa this week for just over 24 hours. In a subtle rebuke to Mr. Trump’s calls to annex Canada as the 51st state, the king read a throne speech, written by the Canadian government, which described the world since the president’s return to office as “dangerous and uncertain.”
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After taking a wrong turn in Buffalo and crossing the Peace Bridge into Fort Erie, Ontario, a man found himself in U.S. custody for three weeks.
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More than three years after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found the ice-encased bodies of Jagdish and Vaishali Patel and their two young children in the desolate borderland between Manitoba and Minnesota, a U.S. court has sentenced the leader of the human smuggling network that they used to a decade in prison.
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A study has clarified the origin of the deadly white-nose disease epidemic among bats in North America and raised serious concerns about a future outbreak.
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times based in Ottawa. He covers politics, culture and the people of Canada and has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
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Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times based in Ottawa. He covers politics, culture and the people of Canada and has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
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