Canada will restrict tariff-free import of cheap, foreign steel to help domestic manufacturers reeling from levies imposed by the US, Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a news conference in Ontario, Carney also pledged to diversify its trading partners away from the US and prioritise the use of Canadian steel.<\/p>\n
The announcement comes in the wake of punitive tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump – first a 25% levy on Canadian steel in March, later doubling it to 50% in June.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the prime minister raised the possibility that US tariffs may remain in place even after a bilateral agreement.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Prime Minister Carney noted that imports currently accounted for nearly two-thirds of Canada’s steel consumption, while over 90% of Canadian steel exports were destined for the US – a level of dependency he described as “unsustainable”.<\/p>\n
Under the new measures, the government will tighten its tariff rate quotas – from 100% to 50% of 2024 steel import volumes from countries without free trade agreements with Canada.<\/p>\n
Any imports exceeding that limit will face a 50% tariff.<\/p>\n
Carney also targeted China in his announcement, saying there would be an additional tariff on steel imports from non-US countries “containing steel melted and poured in China”.<\/p>\n
He added that there will be no changes to the products that are exempt under the Canada-US-Mexico free trade agreement (Cusma).<\/p>\n
The prime minister also pledged to change the federal government’s policy to require contractors to use Canadian steel.<\/p>\n
He added that Canada’s “big projects” – such as the push to build more housing and to strengthen the defence sector – will use Canadian steel.<\/p>\n
These changes will ensure Canadians are “giving ourselves far more than any foreign government can take away”, he said.<\/p>\n
Canada’s steel and aluminium industries are among the hardest hit by Donald Trump’s sector specific tariffs.<\/p>\n
Catherine Cobden, the president and CEO of the Canadian Steel Producers Association, told CBC News that there had been a 30% fall in steel production since Trump first imposed his metal tariff in March.<\/p>\n
“This is something we should have been doing all along, but it’s fantastic to see that we are making progress,” Cobden said referring to Carney’s announcement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada will restrict tariff-free import of cheap, foreign steel to help domestic manufacturers reeling from levies imposed by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-15934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}