TORONTO — President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on all Canadian goods if the country “makes a deal with China,” a week after he said Prime Minister Mark Carney striking a trade deal with Beijing was “good” and what he “should be doing.”
“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 wrote on Truth Social. “China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life.”
In Beijing last week, Carney announced that China and Canada had reached a deal to ease some of the tariffs they had imposed on each other. China lowered its tariff on Canadian agricultural products and Canada will allow 49,000 Chinese-made electric vehicles into the country at a much-reduced tariff rate. Ottawa imposed the auto tariffs in 2024, in coordination with Washington.
Trump’s new threat deepens the greatest divide in U.S.-Canada relations in two centuries. Since returning to the White House a year ago, Trump has imposed tariffs on its goods, questioned its viability as a country and threatened to make it the 51st state.
Canada, with whom the United States shares a 5,525-mile border, is traditionally among its closest allies and trading partners. But trade between the nations, Canadian perceptions of the United States and Canadian visits to the country have all plummeted in the past year.
It was in reference to his 51st state jibes that Trump mocked Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, as “governor.” Until this week, Trump appeared to have had a far more cordial relationship with Carney. His post Saturday appears to have been the first time he has bestowed the title on Carney.
Carney drew a rare standing ovation — and also Trump’s ire — at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday with an address in which he declared that the U.S.-led, rules-based international order was “over.”
In an era in which great powers use “tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” Carney urged “middle powers” to form new alliances.
The speech, which was reprinted in full in newspapers around the world, did not blame any country for the “rupture” in the international order, but it was widely viewed as a veiled broadside against Trump.
Trump appears to have seen it that way, too. In his own address in Davos the following day, he took a not-so-veiled swipe at Carney and Canada, accusing the country of getting “freebies” from the U.S. and its leader of being ungrateful.
“Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump said. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
Carney disagreed.
“Canada and the United States have built a remarkable partnership in the economy, in security and in a rich cultural exchange,” he said Thursday in Quebec City. “But Canada doesn’t ‘live because of the United States.’ Canada thrives because we are Canadian.”
Then Trump rescinded his invitation to Carney to join his Board of Peace. Carney had said he intended to accept, but also expressed concerns about its structure and decision-making processes. Canadian officials said they would not pay $1 billion to become a permanent member.
Trump has used tariffs and the threat of tariffs to pressure multiple nations to behave as he wishes, but Canada has been one of his most frequent targets. He has imposed levies on different Canadian goods, including 35 percent tariffs on items not compliant with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and separate tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum, for different and often contradictory reasons.
It was not clear whether USMCA-compliant goods would be exempt from the 100 percent tariff or what constituted the president’s definition of a deal. It was unclear if the president was referring to a comprehensive free trade deal with China, which Canada says it is not negotiating, or the more modest deal announced this month. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Canada sends roughly three-quarters of its exports to the United States. Amid Trump’s tariffs and tariff threats, Carney has worked to diversify the country’s export portfolio to include countries such as China and India.
Dominic LeBlanc, Carney’s minister for Canada-U.S. trade, said Saturday that the government would remain focused on ensuring the trade relationship “will benefit workers and businesses on both sides of our border” while “strengthening our trading partnerships throughout the world.”
“There is no pursuit of a free trade deal with China,” LeBlanc wrote on X, in apparent response to Trump’s threat. “What was achieved was resolution on several important tariff issues.”
Ottawa and Washington were close to a deal last year that would have reduced some of the U.S. tariffs on Canada. But Trump terminated those talks in October after the province of Ontario aired an advertisement on U.S. television networks that featured audio of President Ronald Reagan arguing against tariffs.
Trump announced then that he would increase tariffs on Canadian goods, but those levies have yet to materialize. The White House has not responded to repeated requests for comment on when they might go into force and on what goods they will apply.
Relations between Canada and China had been in a deep freeze since China detained two Canadians in 2018 in retaliation for Canada’s arrest of a Chinese tech executive wanted in the U.S. on fraud charges. But during Carney’s trip to China this month, the first by a Canadian prime minister since 2017, he said Beijing was “now” a more “predictable” trading partner than Washington.
Before the trip, critics warned that a deal between Ottawa and Beijing risked provoking a backlash from Trump ahead of a review of the USMCA this year. Business and political leaders, who view the survival of the pact that Trump previously called the “best” trade agreement he ever negotiated as critical, feared he could tear it up.
But in the hours after Carney announced the deal, Trump expressed his support.
“It’s okay,” he told reporters. “That’s what he should be doing. It’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal. If you can get a deal with China, you should do that.”
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