The United States has imposed 50% tariffs on goods worth around $20billion from Canada in what was expected to be its final bid to strike a trade deal with the country before tensions flared between longtime allies, Al Jazeera reported.
The tariffs were announced early Saturday after last-minute negotiations failed to deliver a deal. They will now impact around 5percent of Canadian exports to the US, which include hockey sticks, dairy goods and others used for both consumer and industrial purposes.
The tariffs came into place after the president extended an earlier deadline by three days, giving further time to negotiators to hammer out agreements. US Trade Rep. Jamieson Greer said Canada had declined to finalise a deal under terms previously agreed upon during the week.
Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney dismissed Washington’s position and said there has been ” not enough progress with the negotiation to have met our objective for Canadians”. Carney added he has suspended trade negotiations and instructed his team of Canadian negotiators to return to Ottawa. He also promised Canada will match all of the newly imposed US tariffs dollar-for-dollar to protect Canadian workers and businesses.
The White House said that these duties are being applied because of provisions of Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. This accuses Canada of discriminatory treatment of US products. In particular, this means that US tariffs are still levied on goods eligible for preferential terms of trade under the recently ratified agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada (USMCA).
