Trump backtracks on threat to double Canada steel tax

US to apply 25 per cent levy from today after startling U-turn

- ANDREW FEINBERG

Donald Trump took just hours to backtrack on a threat to double down on tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel imports and instead ordered previously announced 25 per cent taxes to go into effect today.

In a statement, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said a 25 per cent tax on steel and aluminum “for Canada and all of our other trading partners” would be implemented today “with no exceptions or exemptions.”

The White House announcement represented a retrenchment of sorts for Trump, who earlier in the day had said he was ordering the 25 per cent tax he had already announced on any imported aluminum or steel from Canada to be raised to 50 per cent – one that will be paid by importers and likely passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

The impetus for the threatened 50 per cent import tax, which had been set to go into effect this morning, was a 25 per cent surcharge that Canadian electricity exporters had briefly placed on power delivered over a shared grid used by a group of American states.

“I will shortly be declaring a ‘national emergency on electricity’ within the threatened area. This will allow the US to quickly do what has to be done to alleviate this abusive threat from Canada,” Trump wrote.

He also demanded that Canada drop a host of longstanding trade barriers, including one on dairy products, and threatened to charge Americans higher import taxes on cars and car parts that are entirely or partially made in Canada starting on 2 April.

But just hours after Trump threatened additional tariffs, Doug Ford, Ontario’s conservative provincial leader, said he would suspend the Canadian province’s 25 per cent electricity surcharge on the United States, citing what he called a “productive conversation” about the economic relationship between Canada and the US with secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick.