If nothing else, the trade war President Trump started against Canada last year feels relentless.
Below, you can find all of our trade articles from the past week — and there are a number of them. But let’s recap what’s transpired and look at where all of this may be headed.
On Tuesday, Canada struck back against the United States: Tariffs of 15, 25 and 50 percent took effect that morning on about $20 billion a year of American exports. The move was Prime Minister Mark Carney’s answer to the 50 percent tariffs Mr. Trump imposed after trade talks between the two countries collapsed last month.
[Read: Brushing Aside Trump’s Threats, Canada Retaliates on Tariffs]
That was just the start. Mr. Trump first threatened to close the U.S. market to business jets made in Quebec and Ontario by Bombardier. At another point, he floated blocking all trade with Canada and other countries running a trade surplus in goods with the United States.
He ultimately didn’t go that far. (Mr. Trump’s 50 percent tariffs were themselves partly retaliation for tariffs Canada imposed last year, after Mr. Trump placed levies of up to 50 percent on Canadian steel, aluminum and autos — a move that violated the free trade agreement between the two countries and Mexico.)
But he did move to shut the border to a range of Canadian products. All Canadian beer, wine and liquor top the list. Whey, the liquid left over from cheese and yogurt production, has also lost the U.S. market. Dairies once dumped it into rivers and lakes, fueling algae blooms, but it is now in demand for protein supplements. Mr. Trump also targeted the founding family of Bombardier, which still controls the aerospace company, banning the three-wheeled motorcycles made by another of its Quebec-based companies.
[Read: Trump Announces Ban on Some Canadian Imports]
Tit and tat have been busy. And few people anticipate the back and forth between the two former economic allies to end soon.
[Read: Carney, at a Cabinet Retreat, Considers Further Trade Strikes Against the U.S.]
Unlike Mr. Tump’s reflex to act quickly, Canada appears to be biding its time. Mr. Carney and his cabinet spent most of the week emphasizing efforts to build closer ties with other nations and plans for domestic infrastructure spending, avoiding questions about further retaliation.
Polls show strong support for Mr. Carney’s decision to walk away from a bad deal with the United States and retaliate. Many Canadians would like to go further, favoring export taxes to raise the price of oil, gas and electricity headed to the United States.
I spoke this week with Andrew McDougall, an assistant professor of Canadian politics at the University of Toronto. He said the national mood against compromise had put Mr. Carney in a bind on reopening talks.
Since negotiations collapsed, Mr. Carney and his officials have said the failure stemmed from several U.S. demands. Those included tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos that would have stayed too high for those industries to compete; a broader expectation that Canada accept tariffs from a country with which it has a free-trade agreement; changes to Canadian laws protecting the country’s culture and French language; and a demand that Canada align with Mr. Trump’s trade policies rather than pursue deals with other countries.
All of it, Mr. Carney has said, is a nonstarter.
American officials have disputed parts of that account, but they continue to make it clear that Mr. Trump will not exempt any nation from tariffs.
“The politics of this is difficult,” Professor McDougall said, adding that Mr. Carney “has to be seen to be standing up for the country.”
“It’s a difficult moment to talk about trade talks when it’s not clear where those will go or what those will look like,” he said.
Much of Mr. Carney’s public support, in Professor McDougall’s view, reflects a perception that he is “acting reasonably,” a dramatic contrast with how Canadians view Mr. Trump.
“It’s that reasonable approach that I think Canadians are responding to, and I think that’s part of the reason why he’s proved as popular as he has,” Professor McDougall said. “It doesn’t look like there’s much of a political appetite to restart these things, given that Carney seems to have the public behind him. I think he’s content to sort of leave it at that for right now.”
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times. A Windsor, Ontario, native now based in Ottawa, he has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
Gander welcomed Americans on Sept. 11
If any small town ever embodied Canada’s longtime friendship with the United States, Gander was it. The Newfoundland town commemorates the Sept. 11 attacks every year, but the event planned for the 25th anniversary took place amid an extraordinary deterioration in relations between the two countries that began with Mr. Trump’s second term and grows more intense by the week. Even as the people in Gander recalled the lifelong friendships with Americans that resulted from the events in 2001, a strong undercurrent of hurt, disappointment and anger ran through preparations for the commemoration.
Read the full article.
This essay asks whether, in the geopolitical moment the countries find themselves in, Canada would help so generously again, and explains why it isn’t a question at all.
Even the bees can’t escape Trump’s tariffs
While far from Canada’s most significant agricultural commodity — it represented roughly $175 million in production value last year — the honey industry and its 16,300 beekeepers are foundational to farming. The sector also illustrates how the trade war is playing out on the ground, far from Ottawa and Washington. In the nation’s honey belt in central Alberta, where the heaviest rains in over a century kept worker bees inactive for much of the summer, Mike deJong, a beekeeper, was already facing a bleak honey harvest. Then Mr. Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on honey and hundreds of other Canadian products.
Read the full article.
Carney doubles down
Mr. Carney, who was elected last spring on a promise to stand up to Mr. Trump, tried to get a good trade deal for Canada last month. But after negotiations collapsed, ushering in new U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods, Mr. Carney followed through on his promise to retaliate. In addition to making Canada the only country other than China to implement countertariffs against the United States, he is also articulating a new Canadian narrative to the world of finance: that this is a land of opportunity that major global funds want to be part of.
Read the full article.
Talking with the Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu
Later this month, the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto will host Daron Acemoglu, a co-recipient of the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a co-author of the seminal book “Why Nations Fail.” Matina Stevis-Gridneff, The Times’s Canada bureau chief, will interview Mr. Acemoglu onstage at the school on Sept. 29 about his new book, “What Happened to Liberal Democracy?” New York Times subscribers receive a 20 percent discount on tickets to the event. You can buy your tickets here using the promo code NYT20.
Trans Canada
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A road trip along the North Shore of Lake Superior, from Duluth, Minn., to Pukaskwa National Park in Ontario, packed multiple adventures into a week.
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As global demand for seaweed surges, a Canadian corporation’s bid for exclusive harvesting rights in the west of Ireland has upended a once-sleepy industry.
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For his final year as artistic director of the Stratford Festival, Antoni Cimolino directs “The Tempest,” and like Prospero, he understands how to wield acts of kindness.
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Britain, Canada and France announced sanctions this week on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, with Britain saying Israel had “turned a blind eye” to violence against Palestinians.
How are we doing? We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to [email protected].
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The post Why Carney Isn’t Rushing Back to the Negotiating Table appeared first on New York Times.
