Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he is in favour of imposing “matching” retaliatory tariffs on the United States if President Donald Trump hits Canada with sweeping 25 per cent tariffs as early as next week.
“If the president does choose to proceed with tariffs on Canada, Canada will respond and everything is on the table,” said Trudeau during a news conference Tuesday in Montebello, Que., where his team is gathered for a two-day cabinet retreat.
“I support the principle of dollar-for-dollar matching tariffs. It’s something that we are absolutely going to be looking at if that is how they move forward,” he told reporters.
Trudeau added that while his focus was on avoiding tariffs, if Trump does follow through on his plans, Canada’s response “will be robust and rapid and measured, but very strong.”
Trudeau is huddling with his team in Montebello for the government’s annual winter cabinet retreat, which will be his last before he steps aside in March.
Usually scheduled to coincide with the return of Parliament after the holidays, the retreat this year is instead focused on the Canada-U.S. trade strategy.
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Shortly after winning the presidential race, Trump threatened in November to impose 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian goods coming into the U.S. unless Canada tightened border security. The same threat was also made towards Mexico.
On his first day in office, Trump said late Monday evening that he planned to hit the U.S. North American neighbours with tariffs by Feb. 1.
“We’re thinking in terms of 25 per cent on Mexico and Canada because they’re allowing vast numbers of people, Canada is a very bad abuser also, vast numbers of people to come in and fentanyl to come in,” Trump claimed.
Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Monday evening that this changes little, and the government has prepared responses for various possible scenarios that it’s been reviewing for weeks.
Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said Canada will continue to work on preventing tariffs, while also preparing to retaliate if needed. She had warned last week of the “biggest trade war between Canada and U.S. in decades.”
Trudeau said that Canada is a “safe, secure and reliable” trading partner for the U.S., especially when it comes to steel, aluminum, critical minerals and energy.
“Canada provides many of the necessary inputs that the American economy is going to need in order to grow and boom economically, whether it’s energy, whether it’s critical minerals, whether it’s fertilizer, whether it’s uranium,” he said.
Trudeau added that the alternative for the U.S. for these resources would be Russia, China or Venezuela.
Trudeau said if Trump moves on his threat, “the goal will be to get those tariffs off as quickly as possible” and to support Canadian businesses impacted by the proposed measure.
An overwhelming majority (82 per cent) of Canadians think Ottawa should retaliate by slapping tariffs on American imports into Canada, according to a poll conducted exclusively by Ipsos for Motorcycle accident toronto today released on Tuesday.
Of those polled by Ipsos, 55 per cent said they believed Trump’s threat was just a bluff to get Canada to act quickly on other issues such as beefing up border security and spending more on defence.
But Canadians also don’t believe the Trudeau government has a mandate to deal with Trump’s threats: 77 per cent of those surveyed said an immediate general election is required to give the winner of that election the mandate required to negotiate with the Americans.
— with files from Motorcycle accident toronto today’ David Akin and The Canadian Press
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