US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose a 100% tariff on goods imported from Canada if it went ahead with its China trade deal, intensifying a feud with Prime Minister Mark Carney, a rising voice in the West’s pushback to Trump new world order.<\/p>\n
Trump said in a social media post that if Carney \u201cthinks he is going to make Canada a \u2018Drop Off Port\u2019 for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Trump has waged a trade war over the past year, Canada this month negotiated a deal to lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in return for lower import taxes on Canadian farm products.<\/p>\n
Trump initially had said that agreement was what Carney \u201cshould be doing and it\u2019s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dominic LeBlanc, Canada\u2019s minister responsible for trade with the United States, said Canada and China had resolved \u201cseveral important trade issues\u201d but there was no pursuit of a free-trade agreement.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s threat came amid an escalating war of words with Carney as the Republican president\u2019s push to acquire Greenland strained the NATO alliance. <\/p>\n
Trump had commented while in Davos, Switzerland, this week that \u201cCanada lives because of the United States.\u201d Carney shot back that his nation can be an example that the world does not have to bend toward autocratic tendencies. <\/p>\n
\u201cCanada doesn\u2019t live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump later revoked his invitation to Carney to join the president’s \u201cBoard of Peace\u201d that he is forming to try to resolve global conflicts.<\/p>\n
Trump’s push to acquire Greenland has come after he has repeatedly needled Canada over its sovereignty and suggested it also be absorbed the United States as a 51st state. <\/p>\n
He posted an altered image on social media this week showing a map of the United States that included Canada, Venezuela, Greenland and Cuba as part of its territory.<\/p>\n
In his message Saturday, Trump continued his provocations by calling Canada’s leader \u201cGovernor Carney.\u201d <\/p>\n
Trump had used the same nickname for Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, and his first use of it toward Carney was the latest mark of their soured relationship.<\/p>\n
Daniel B\u00e9land, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said \u201cthere was a sense Trump showed more respect for Carney than for Trudeau. <\/p>\n
Now, after Carney\u2019s visit to China and, even more, his widely celebrated Davos speech, which clearly outshined and upset Trump, the gloves are off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carney has emerged as a leader of a movement for countries to find ways to link up and counter the US under Trump. <\/p>\n
Speaking in Davos before Trump, Carney said, \u201cMiddle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu\u201d and he warned about coercion by great powers \u2014 without mentioning Trump\u2019s name. <\/p>\n
The prime minister received widespread praise and attention for his remarks, upstaging Trump at the World Economic Forum.<\/p>\n
The prime minister even spoke of a \u201crupture\u201d between the US under Trump and its Western allies that would never be repaired.<\/p>\n
Trump, in his Truth Social post Saturday, also said that \u201cChina will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life.\u201d <\/p>\n
In a later post, the president said: \u201cThe last thing the World needs is to have China take over Canada. It\u2019s NOT going to happen, or even come close to happening!\u201d<\/p>\n
Carney has not yet reached a deal with Trump to reduce some of the tariffs that he has imposed on key sectors of the Canadian economy. <\/p>\n
But Canada has been protected by the heaviest impact of Trump\u2019s tariffs by the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement. That trade agreement is up for a review this year.<\/p>\n
In the fall, the Canadian province of Ontario aired an anti-tariff ad in the US that prompted Trump to end trade talks with Canada. <\/p>\n
The television ad used the words of former President Ronald Reagan to criticise US tariffs. <\/p>\n
Trump pledged to increase tariffs on imports of Canadian goods by an extra 10%. He did not follow through.<\/p>\n
As for China, Canada had initially mirrored the United States by putting a 100% tariff on electric vehicles from Beijing and a 25% tariff on steel and aluminium. <\/p>\n
China had responded by imposing 100% import taxes on Canadian canola oil and meal and 25% on pork and seafood.<\/p>\n
But as Trump\u2019s pursued pressure tactics, Canada\u2019s foreign policy has been less aligned with the US, creating an opening for an improved relationship with China. <\/p>\n
Carney made the tariff announcement earlier this month during a visit to Beijing.<\/p>\n
Carney has said that Canada’s relationship with the US is complex and deep and that Canada and China disagree on issues such as human rights.<\/p>\n
LeBlanc, the trade minister, said in a statement that Canada would work to ensure that the future of that relationship \u201cbenefits workers and businesses on both sides of the border.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canada is the top export destination for 36 US states. Nearly $3.6 billion Canadian worth of goods and services cross the border each day. <\/p>\n
About 60% of US crude oil imports are from Canada, as are 85% of US electricity imports.<\/p>\n
Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminium, and uranium to the US and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and investing in for national security.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose a 100% tariff on goods imported from Canada if it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[65,42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-250173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-north-america","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}