The Trump administration imposed an import ban on some Canadian products, including alcohol, dairy products and motorcycles, at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday.
The move was the latest offensive in a vicious trade fight President Trump has picked with Canada. Though the bans affect just a tiny proportion of Canada’s exports to the United States, they are a sign of how much the relationship between two formerly close political and economic allies has unraveled.
On Monday, U.S. officials released a notice saying Canadian products including whey protein, molasses, nonalcoholic beer, wine, vermouth and a variety of liquor would be “unconditionally rejected” by U.S. Customs and Border Protection starting at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.
The ban comes on top of 50 percent tariffs that Mr. Trump slapped on about 5 percent of Canadian goods last month, a move that prompted Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, to hit back “dollar for dollar” on a range of U.S. imports.
Stephen Brown, the chief North American economist at Capital Economics, said in a note that the import ban covered only 0.25 percent of Canadian exports to the United States and would have little effect on either economy. But the development called into question whether the countries would be able to resolve their trade fight and move forward with the negotiation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, he said.
The United States and Mexico have engaged in several rounds of negotiations over that agreement and could try to conclude their discussions this year. But discussions between the United States and Canada have lagged far behind.
Trade tensions between the two nations have left the U.S.M.C.A. agreement “in limbo and at risk of breaking down entirely,” Mr. Brown added.
Tensions have also spilled over into a variety of industries that depend on the tightly integrated economic relationship, from restaurants and paper mills to aluminum smelters and automotive suppliers.
Canada is the United States’ second-largest trading partner after Mexico, and the biggest supplier of U.S. energy imports, including crude oil, natural gas and electricity. Last year, 72 percent of Canadian exports went to the United States, and nearly half of its imports were American.
More than two dozen U.S. states also count Canada as their biggest export market, meaning the trade fight has also been looming over U.S. midterm elections in November.
Some of the more competitive seats are in states with close business ties to Canada, including Maine, Michigan and New Hampshire, and Democrats have pounced on tensions with Canada as evidence of Mr. Trump’s economic mismanagement.
Last week, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, called the import ban and tariffs on Canadian products “a bad deal.”
“President Trump and Republicans promised to lower costs and make life more affordable, but they’ve used their total power in Washington to make life more expensive than ever,” she said.
But the Trump administration has remained highly critical of Canada for measures that it says discriminate against U.S. farmers, manufacturers and businesses. Canada was one of only two countries, along with China, to retaliate against Mr. Trump’s tariffs, including by imposing a tariff on some American-made vehicles. Several Canadian provinces also pulled U.S. liquor from their shelves last year in protest.
On Monday, Mr. Trump said that Canada had “to treat our country with respect” and that the Canadians had “been very, very bad” to American farmers. He predicted Canada would come to the United States over “the next three or four weeks” to make a deal on tariffs.
In an interview on CNBC last week, Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, who is in charge of the negotiations, said there was “no urgency” on the U.S. side toward a deal.
“We’re still getting what we need from them, in terms of oil, gas, potash,” he said, adding: “There’s still a lot of strong trade between the two countries. We’re comfortable with where we are.”
While Mr. Trump has placed extensive tariffs on other countries, the decision to ban certain imports from Canada altogether has been an unusual one, and something of a test run for the administration. Trump officials have indicated that, if they deem the Canada measure to be successful, they could take the approach of banning products from certain other countries as well.
Both of those measures were issued using Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which Congress passed in the depths of the Great Depression. The legal provision had never before been used to impose tariffs.
Trump officials have argued that, in addition to Section 338, they can use an emergency law to impose trade embargoes if they choose. Mr. Trump used the emergency law to impose global tariffs last year. The Supreme Court overturned that use, but indicated that the law might cover trade embargoes.
The import ban is the product of an extensive tit-for-tat between the two nations since last year. Canada was one of Mr. Trump’s first targets after returning to office: He announced, and then quickly imposed, tariffs on Canadian goods, arguing that the country was allowing fentanyl to come into the United States, a charge many Canadian officials said was false.
The administration later exempted products that qualify for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement from those tariffs, meaning most products continued to trade between the countries tariff free. Other national security levies still apply, however, to important Canadian exports like cars, steel and aluminum.
Mr. Trump then ramped up the pressure on Canada this year, in what appeared to be a bid to bring Canadian officials to the negotiating table over the U.S.M.C.A. In July, he threatened a 50 percent tariff on Canadian alcohol, dairy products, plywood, hockey sticks and other goods.
In August, the two sides appeared to be headed for a deal that would prevent those tariffs from taking effect, but the talks collapsed suddenly, leaving Mr. Trump to impose the 50 percent tariffs as well as the import ban.
In an interview with The New York Times last week, Mr. Carney said that he had talked to Mr. Trump “a number of times” since talks broke down and that the two had a “good relationship.” Mr. Carney argued that what was good for Canada was good for the United States.
“U.S.M.C.A. is still operating today. It’s still in force,” Mr. Carney said. “It’s not being fully respected, and that’s an issue for the U.S. political system to determine the governance of that.”
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