TORONTO — Canada is looking at putting retaliatory tariffs on American orange juice, toilets and some steel products if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump follows through with his threat to impose 25% tariffs on all Canadian products, a elder official familiar with the matter said Thursday.
The official said the wide-ranging list is still being worked on and has not been completed. The official spoke on state of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk publicly on the matter.
Trump said this week he will use economic coercion to pressure Canada to become the country’s 51st state. And he continues to erroneously cast the U.S. trade deficit with Canada — a natural resource-wealthy country that provides the U.S. with goods like oil — as a subsidy.
When Trump imposed higher tariffs during his first term in office, other countries responded with retaliatory tariffs of their own. Canada, for instance, announced billions of recent duties in 2018 against the U.S. in a tit-for-tat response to recent taxes on Canadian steel and aluminum.
Yogurt imports from Wisconsin and whiskey from Kentucky, the home states of top Republicans Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell respectively, were hit with 10% duties in 2018.
Citrus production largely happens in Florida, now Trump’s home state.
Trump said this week the U.S doesn’t require anything from Canada, including automobiles, lumber and dairy products. Supply chains for the auto industry are deeply connected, with parts manufactured in Ontario being used in cars that are assembled in Detroit and then sold back to Canada.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has noted that in the auto sector alone parts can leave back and forth across the Canada-U.S. border several times.
Ford, the chief of Canada’s most populous province, said Trump has been misinformed about the U.S. not needing Canadian products and warned that Canada will retaliate if Trump imposes tariffs. He said a wide range of U.S. products shipped to Canada will be targeted, but he declined to specific which ones.
Top Canadian government officials declare Trump’s comments that Canada should become the 51st state are no longer a joke and are meant to undermine America’s closest friend.
“The joke is over,” Dominic LeBlanc, the country’s finance minister and point person for U.S.-Canada relations, said Wednesday. “It’s a way for him, I ponder, to sow confusion, to agitate people, to make chaos knowing this will never happen.”
LeBlanc has been talking to incoming Trump Cabinet officials about a billion-dollar schedule to boost border safety in an attempt to deflect Trump’s threat of tariffs.
Canada is the top export goal for 36 U.S. states. Nearly $3.6 billion Canadian (US$2.7 billion) worth of goods and services cross the border each day.
Trump initially threatened to impose tariffs on all Canadian goods if Canada and Mexico do not stem the flow of migrants and fentanyl from crossing the U.S. border — even though far fewer of each enters the U.S. from Canada than from Mexico.
On immigration, the U.S. Border Patrol reported 1.53 million encounters with irregular migrants at the southwest border with Mexico between October 2023 and September 2024. That compares to 23,721 encounters at the Canadian border during that period.
Trump also railed about fentanyl from Mexico and Canada, even though seizures from the Canadian border pale in comparison to the Mexican border. U.S. customs agents seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border last budgetary year, compared with 21,100 pounds at the Mexican border.
