Canada’s provincial leaders in disarray over response to Trump tariff threats
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Responses range from conciliation to retaliation, including cutting off electricity and halting the purchase of US liquor. Canada’s provincial premiers are sharply divided on how to prepare for US trade tariffs, less than a week before Donald Trump takes office with a threat to dramatically reshape the relationship between the two countries.
Canadian officials have sought to defuse the crisis with personal appeals to the president-elect, multimillion-dollar advertising sprees and targeted threats, but the country remains gripped by uncertainty over how Trump’s tariffs might take effect. On Monday, Bloomberg reported that the incoming US administration is weighing hiking tariffs by 2%-5% a month to avoid spiking inflation.
And with Justin Trudeau’s government largely silent on its next steps, Canada’s provincial leaders, keenly aware of the looming economic damage, have taken matters into their own hands. Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, briefly met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida over the weekend, returning home with the grim news that she received no assurances that the president-elect’s team intended to back down on the threat to impose a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods – a measure that economists said would be damaging on both sides of the border.
“I think we need to be prepared that tariffs are coming,” she told reporters. Smith, the first premier to meet Trump since he first made his tariff threats in November, had hoped to secure a “carve-outs” for Canadian oil. Her province exports 3.5m barrels of oil to the US each day.
