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US President Donald Trump threatened to slap a 100% tariff on all Canadian goods if the country’s prime minister strikes a trade deal with China.
“If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A.,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Saturday.
Tensions between Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney have escalated in recent days, after Carney gave a speech in Davos, Switzerland, pushing against the world’s great powers.
He recently met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and announced their countries had reached a trade deal that included electric vehicles.
At the time, Trump hailed the potential deal as “a good thing”.
It is unclear if that deal has come into effect, or if Trump was referring to it specifically. The BBC has reached out to the White House, Carney’s office and Canada’s minister responsible for US-Canada trade for comment.
In his Saturday post, Trump referred to the prime minister as “Governor Carney” and wrote that if “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken.”
Trump did not provide a timeline or more information about the threatened tariff. Last year, when he first threatened new tariffs on the US northern neighbour, Trump began calling Canada the US’s “51st state” with Carney as its “governor”, and suggested he may try to acquire the country entirely.
While the countries’ relationship had been improving in recent months, Trump’s push to take control of Greenland and his comments about Nato have put him at odds with Canadian and European leaders. Carney did not mention the president by name in his speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland this week, but he warned of a “rupture” in US-led world order, which seemed to anger Trump.
“Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump said in his own address, which followed Carney’s.
Trump then on Friday withdrew Canada’s invitation to join his newly constituted Board of Peace, which is being billed by the US as a new international organisation for resolving conflicts.
At the same time, he blasted Canada in a social media post for being “against The Golden Dome being built over Greenland”, referring to the anti-missile shield he has planned, and for “doing business with China”.
In discussing the deal with China, where Canada would ease tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and China would lower levies on Canadian agricultural products, earlier this month, Carney told reporters that “the world has changed” and progress made with China sets Canada up “well for the new world order”.
He added that Canada’s relationship with China has become “more predictable” than its relationship with the US under the Trump administration.
Experts told the BBC Canada’s policy on China has undergone a significant shift, one that is shaped by ongoing uncertainty with the US, its largest trade partner.
When he returned to office last year, Trump put new tariffs on goods from Canada, including a 35% tax on all items that don’t fall under a free trade agreement between the two countries that is currently under mandatory review.
Carney pushed back on Trump son Thursday saying that Canada and the US “have built a remarkable partnership” over many decades.
“But Canada doesn’t live because of the United States,” he said. “Canada thrives because we are Canadians.”
