British Columbia Premier David Eby speaks to U.S. media about failed trade negotiations and how it will impact industries.
Day: 24 August 2026 (Page 2 of 2)
U.S. tariffs on all cars and trucks, automotive parts and steel will be increased to 50% starting January 1, 2027, President Donald Trump said in a social post on Monday after trade talks with Canada collapsed over the weekend, David Shepardson and Daphne Psaledakis at Reuters report.
Alex Ballingall, Toronto Star: Donald Trump threatens 50% tariffs on Canadian autos
Bloomberg: Trump vows to double tariffs on Canadian autos, escalating fight
The breakdown in Canada-U.S. negotiations has left Canada in a difficult position, with uncertain and challenging times ahead. But agreeing to the deal the U.S. was offering on Friday night would have been worse, writes Steve Verheul in the Globe and Mail.
Accepting tariffs against key Canadian exports in an integrated North American economy and against the fundamental obligations of our existing free trade agreement would have meant crossing a threshold that would be difficult to unwind. Canadian autos, which faced a reported 15-per-cent tariff under the terms of the proposed deal without an exemption for Canadian content, would have faced the most severe consequences. But that illustrates obstacles that would have also been faced by others.
On the face of it, the opponents — I still have to rub my eyes at the idea of Canada as an enemy — appear extremely unevenly matched. The U.S. economy is a dozen times larger than Canada’s. We buy three-quarters of their exports, while they buy only about a sixth of ours. Surely they must have much more than we do to lose from trade conflict.
Yet one clear lesson from a year and a half of Trumpian trade war is that when trade conflicts become extreme, access to crucial imports is more important than the ability to export to another country’s markets. In the case of Trump’s tariffs on China, they have been little more than an inconvenience to the Chinese economy. But China’s threat to cut off exports of rare earths is an existential threat to Western technology industries.
For Canada, the choice came down to either severe but temporary economic instability or binding itself to a pseudo-democratic fiscal basketcase of a nation, whose only apparent foreign policy objective has become domination for the gratification of its president’s slapdash vanity, Stephen Marche writes in the NY Times.
But Mr. Carney did not simply reject a trade offer on Friday. He was openly defiant of the new breed of American aggression. “We will not allow any nation to determine our future,” he said.
In stark contrast to most other world leaders who continue trying to find ways to appease the authoritarian in the White House, the Canadian Prime Minister treated Trump as a naked emperor leading a government of total amateurs, writes Simon Marks at The i Paper.
“They asked too much and offered too little”, he told reporters on Saturday. “You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked”, he claimed, adding: “We cannot accept what they’ve offered and will not give what they demand.”
The US imposed 50% tariffs on C$28billion (£14.6bn) worth of Canadian goods, while Mark Carney, the country’s prime minister, has vowed to match them “dollar for dollar,” reports Lauren Almeida at The Guardian.
New York governor Kathy Hochul posted on X: “Needlessly picking fights with our allies and raising prices here at home. That’s Trump’s economic policy in a nutshell.”
Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, said the new tariffs meant “higher costs for small businesses, farmers, and all Minnesota families.”
She wrote on X: “Canada is Minnesota’s #1 trading partner. Minnesotans are paying for Trump’s chaos.”
Last Updated on 2026-08-25 09:45 EDT
Ottawa’s negotiators rejected an 11th-hour demand from the Trump administration to ditch requirements that U.S. streaming platforms, including Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, promote Canadian film, TV and music to their users in Canada.
On Friday evening, the U.S. negotiating team introduced an unexpected demand that Canada provide exemptions to its laws requiring U.S. streamers to boost the discoverability of Canadian content, including French-language content, in this country, reports Marie Woolf at The Globe and Mail.