Key Points
- President Trump has threatened to impose a 100% tariff on all Canadian goods.
- The threat is a response to Canada’s recent trade talks with China.
- Tensions between Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney have escalated over the issue of Greenland.
- Trump’s position is a reversal from a few weeks ago when he seemed to support a Canada-China deal.
President Donald Trump has threatened to slap a 100% tariff on all Canadian goods if the country moves forward with a new trade deal with China. In a series of posts on his social media platform, Trump warned Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney that a deal with China would “endanger” his country.
“China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it,” Trump wrote. “If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A.”
The threat is a dramatic reversal of Trump’s position just a few weeks ago. After Carney’s recent trip to China, where he worked to reset the two countries’ strained relationship, Trump had sounded supportive. “If you can get a deal with China, you should do that,” he told reporters at the time.
However, tensions between the two leaders have escalated in recent days, largely due to Carney’s strong criticism of Trump’s pursuit of Greenland. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Carney called on “middle powers” to band together to avoid being “victimized by American hegemony.”
Trump shot back in his own speech, saying Canada “lives because of the United States,” a statement that Carney immediately rejected.
Now, Trump is using the China trade deal as a new point of leverage. He suggested that China would try to use Canada as a “drop-off port” to evade U.S. tariffs.
A Canadian official has said that the country is “not pursuing a free trade deal with China” and that the recent talks were about resolving a few specific tariff issues. But with the relationship between the two leaders at a new low, and the renegotiation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal just a few months away, this new tariff threat adds a whole new level of uncertainty to the future of North American trade.
