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U.S. President Donald Trump returned to making tariff-related threats against Canada on Friday afternoon, restating his intent to impose tariffs in retaliation for wildfire smoke drifting across the border into the United States.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to put a big tariff on Canada because of the smoke,” Trump told reporters, when speaking in the Oval Office following an announcement relating to American nuclear energy.<\/p>\n
Trump, who made a similar threat a week ago<\/a>, did not provide any detail on how the tariffs would be implemented. <\/p>\n In the Oval Office, Trump also said he had “told Canada they have to do something about it,” which he’d also previously stated doing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Massive wildfires have been burning<\/a> across Canada this summer, forcing communities to evacuate and spurring air quality warnings in several areas.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Mark Carney said earlier this week that he had “made very clear” in recent conversations with the U.S. president that Canada was doing its utmost to control the wildfires.<\/p>\n Carney told CBC News<\/a> that he had conveyed the size of the problem to Trump, including “the scale of the forest that Canada is blessed with \u2014 eight times the size of Texas \u2014 [and] the fact that we have effectively drought conditions that have extended\u00a0from the equivalent of Texas all the way to Minnesota, to put it in American terms.”<\/p>\n But Trump isn’t the only U.S. lawmaker who has criticized Canada over the fallout from the wildfires.<\/p>\n A handful of members of the U.S. Congress recently wrote to Carney<\/a>, accusing Canada of failing to conduct adequate forest maintenance to reduce the risk of wildfires. <\/p>\n However, a U.S. senator this week suggested recent statements from U.S. Republicans criticizing Canada for its wildfire management are insulting and ridiculous<\/a>.<\/p>\n WATCH | Is Trump’s wildfire tariff threats just ‘blowing smoke’?: Is Trump \u2018blowing smoke\u2019 on wildfire tariff threats?<\/p>\n Trump is renewing threats to impose another tariff on Canada due to wildfire smoke traversing the border. This latest threat comes after the White House announced new plans earlier this week to hit Canada with a 50 per cent tariff on a number of goods. Power & Politics speaks with trade expert Laura Dawson.Trump administration favours use of tariffs<\/p>\n Laura Dawson, executive director of the Future Borders Coalition and an expert on Canada-U.S. economic relations, told CBC’s Power & Politics that Trump’s threat of wildfire-related tariffs against Canada is part of his penchant for “getting an impact.”<\/p>\n “And this is definitely a line that’s getting a rise out of people,” Dawson said.<\/p>\n But she noted that tariffs needed to be based in international trade law and “there’s absolutely no basis in trade law for wildfire smoke.”<\/p>\n “So while he’s getting an impact from it, I don’t see even the most peculiar gymnastics by [U.S. Trade Representative] Jamieson Greer figuring out a way to translate those [threats] into cross-border trade tariffs.”<\/p>\n Trump is an avowed fan of tariffs. His administration has favoured the use of tariffs during his second presidency \u2014 even after running into court-related setbacks<\/a> in terms of how the U.S. government is able to wield them.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, Trump separately threatened to impose 50 per cent tariffs<\/a> on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian goods effective Aug. 19. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784943801_64_default.jpg\")
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