TORONTO — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Sunday his country has no intention of pursuing a free trade deal with China. He was responding to President Trump’s threat to impose a 100% tariff on goods imported from Canada if America’s northern neighbor went ahead with a trade deal with Beijing.
Carney noted that his recent agreement with China merely cuts tariffs on a few sectors that were recently hit with tariffs.
The prime minister said that under the free trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico, there are commitments not to pursue free trade agreements with nonmarket economies without prior notification.
“We have no intention of doing that with China or any other nonmarket economy,” Carney said. “What we have done with China is to rectify some issues that developed in the last couple of years.”
In 2024, Canada mirrored the United States by putting a 100% tariff on electric vehicles from Beijing and a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum. China had responded by imposing 100% import taxes on Canadian canola oil and meal and 25% on pork and seafood.
Breaking with the United States this month during a visit to China, Carney cut the 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars in return for lower tariffs on those Canadian products.
Carney has said there would be an initial annual cap of 49,000 vehicles on EV imports from China at a tariff rate of 6.1%, growing to about 70,000 over five years. He noted there was no cap before 2024. He also has said the initial cap on Chinese EV imports was about 3% of the 1.8 million vehicles sold in Canada annually and that, in exchange, China is expected to begin investing in the Canadian auto industry within three years.
Trump made his threat in a social media post Saturday and said that if 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.”
The president’s comments marked a shift in position. When Carney announced Canada’s recent trade pact with China, Trump said that is what the Canadian leader “should be doing and it’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, speaking Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” echoed Trump’s latest remarks.
“We can’t let Canada become an opening that the Chinese pour their cheap goods into the U.S.,” he said. “We have a [United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement], but … based on that, which is going to be renegotiated this summer, and I’m not sure what Prime Minister Carney is doing here, other than trying to virtue-signal to his globalist friends at Davos.”
Trump’s threat came amid an escalating war of words with Carney as the Republican president’s push to acquire Greenland strained the NATO alliance.
Carney has emerged as a leader of a movement for countries to find ways to link up and counter the U.S. under Trump. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week before Trump, Carney said, “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu,” and he warned about coercion by great powers — without mentioning Trump’s name. The prime minister received widespread praise and attention for his remarks, upstaging Trump at the global gathering.
Trump’s push to acquire Greenland — a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark — came after he repeatedly needled Canada over its sovereignty and suggested it be absorbed into the United States as a “51st state.” He posted an altered image on social media last week showing a map of the United States that included Canada, Venezuela, Greenland and Cuba as part of its territory.
Gillies writes for the Associated Press.
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