{"id":576903,"date":"2026-08-22T13:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T13:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/576903\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T13:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T13:08:10","slug":"us-imposes-50-tariffs-on-canadian-products-after-trade-deal-talks-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/576903\/","title":{"rendered":"US imposes 50% tariffs on Canadian products after trade deal talks fail"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United States imposed 50% tariffs on US$20 billion (NZ$33.4 billion) worth of Canadian products early Saturday, and Canada immediately said it would retaliate, after last-ditch negotiations failed<\/a> to resolve the latest strain in already tense relations between the historic allies.<\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump\u2019s import taxes will hit about 5% of what Canada ships to the United States every year, including products ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses,\u201d Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement. The retaliation escalates the trade conflict and calls into question the future of a North American trade pact between the United States, Canada and Mexico that is crucial to industry in all three countries.<\/p>\n

Canada sought concessions on Trump tariffs on steel, aluminium, autos and lumber that the United States was unwilling to provide, a senior Trump administration official told reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cTonight, Canada declined to finalise the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week. Despite the US offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walk-backs of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days,\u201d US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement read to reporters on a press call shortly before midnight.<\/p>\n

Carney blamed Washington for the breakdown, saying \u201clast-minute changes in the US proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.\u201d He said he had suspended negotiations and directed Canada\u2019s negotiating team to return to Ottawa.<\/p>\n

Carney said his government would announce additional support for Canadian workers and businesses in the coming days.<\/p>\n

Greer said the US offer was \u201cforward-looking\u201d and included \u201ca historic economic and national security partnership”. <\/p>\n

No further talks have been planned. The breakdown in negotiations marked a sharp reversal from two days earlier, when officials from the two countries sounded as if they were headed toward a compromise.<\/p>\n

Carney said Canada\u2019s goal throughout the negotiations had been to secure the best possible agreement, \u201cnever a deal at any price or on any deadline”. <\/p>\n

\"Rolled<\/p>\n

Rolled coils of steel sit in the yard at the ArcelorMittal Dofasco steel plant in Hamilton, Ont. on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

A typically cooperative alliance goes sour<\/p>\n

The political impact will likely be even bigger than the economic fallout. The countries sold each other US$880 billion (NZ$1.4 trillion) worth of goods and services last year.<\/p>\n

The tariffs were initially supposed to kick in at 12.01am Wednesday (local time). But Trump extended the deadline for three days to allow talks to continue, but the two countries still could not reach an agreement in time.<\/p>\n

The two countries have wrangled for decades over trade, poking each other over sore spots like Canadian softwood lumber imports and US access to Canada\u2019s protected dairy market.<\/p>\n

Somehow, they still managed to remain friends, allies and trading partners. Canadian soldiers fought alongside Americans in Afghanistan after 9\/11. The 8891km-long US-Canada border is undefended, and nearly 330,000 people and $2 billion worth of goods cross it every day; 800,000 Canadians live in the United States.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s approach to dealing with Canada marks an extraordinary departure from the traditionally cooperative relationship between the two countries. Trump has hit Canadian goods with tariffs \u2014 in a push to bring manufacturing back to the United States \u2014 and has repeatedly made inflammatory comments about turning Canada into America\u2019s 51st state.<\/p>\n

Carney said Canada had recognised that \u201cAmerica has changed\u201d and that the two countries would \u201cnot return to our old relationship”. <\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

This combination of images shows Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Donald Trump during a group photo at the G7 Summit (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Canadians and Americans are frustrated<\/p>\n

The Canadian public is fed up. A petition to expel the US ambassador, a Trump ally, has collected nearly 248,000 signatures since July 21. It accuses Ambassador Pete Hoekstra of having \u201cnormalised\u2019\u2019 Trump\u2019s talk of annexing Canada, among other things.<\/p>\n

The two countries had good reasons to find a compromise.<\/p>\n

Nearly 72% of Canada\u2019s goods exports last year went to the United States. And the Trump administration might be wary of imposing a hefty new tariff \u2014 paid by US importers who try to pass along the cost to consumers via higher prices \u2014 ahead of November\u2019s midterm elections. American voters are already frustrated with the high cost of living.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada likely wanted further sector-specific relief than the US was willing to offer, or Canada\u2019s concessions did not go far enough,” said Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding and a former U.S. trade official. “Either way, I think both sides will be under immense pressure in the coming days to still find an off-ramp. But if Canada has agreed to also impose tariffs, the off-ramp may be even harder to find.\u201d<\/p>\n

Candace Laing, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, called the tariffs \u201ca body blow to North American competitiveness,\u201d warning they would raise costs for Americans while threatening Canadian customers, investment and small businesses.<\/p>\n

The rift comes as the United States, Mexico and Canada are trying to renew a trade agreement that Trump negotiated in his first term and once praised as a triumph. The United States has begun formal talks with Mexico over revamping the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). But talks with Canada have not begun, and escalating trade conflict casts doubt on whether they will.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada told the Americans in advance that if these tariffs landed, it would stop negotiating and retaliate,” said Barry Appleton, senior fellow at the Center for International Law at New York Law School. \u201dThe American trade representative said publicly he would not tolerate retaliation. Both sides have now committed themselves in public, which is how escalation stops being a choice.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States imposed 50% tariffs on US$20 billion (NZ$33.4 billion) worth of Canadian products early Saturday, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[65,42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-576903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576903","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=576903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}