Canadian Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc said the country would be willing to hold early talks on the North American free trade pact with the United States, which is scheduled for joint review next year.
“If the American administration indicated to us that they wanted to advance that date and have those conversations, we would be ready,” LeBlanc told Bloomberg News on Friday. He added that the nations have a lot of common interests between the three of them.
The United States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement (USMCA) went into effect in 2020 and is scheduled for joint review in 2026. The pact replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA.
LeBlanc said the Canadian government would prefer to hash out all details on trade in one broad negotiation instead of sector by sector over the course of weeks.
Ottawa also wants to move quickly on trade agreements to prevent China from undercutting North American markets with predatory pricing, he said.
Canada put tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles as well as aluminum and steel last year. On March 8, China retaliated by imposing tariffs on over $2.6 billion worth of Canadian agricultural and food products.
LeBlanc said Canada wants to work with the United States to stop China from “dumping into the North American market,” Bloomberg reported.
LeBlanc’s comments come after President Donald Trump went ahead with 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded with retaliatory tariffs on $CA30 billion (US$21 billion) of U.S. goods.
On Thursday, Trump paused tariffs on USMCA-compliant exports from the neighboring nations for a month.
Ottawa then announced it would suspend an additional CA$125 billion of tariffs on American products, which were scheduled to go into effect on March 25. Ottawa’s initial 25 percent tariffs on American goods are still active, since some U.S. tariffs are still in place.
Around 50 percent of American imports from Mexico are covered by the trade agreement, while 38 percent of Canadian goods are covered, according to the White House. Trump negotiated the USMCA agreement in 2018 during his first term.
On Friday Trump said he would place reciprocal tariffs on Canadian lumber and dairy products to match the duties Canada charges for shipping the products to the United States.
“Canada has been ripping us off for years on tariffs for lumber and for dairy products,” Trump said from the Oval Office.
“They’ll be met with the exact same tariff unless they drop it, and that’s what reciprocal means,” he added.
The United States already had 14.54 percent tariffs on Canadian lumber, with Canadian International Trade Minister Mary Ng saying in the past that the tariffs are “baseless and unfair,” and that they harm “consumers and producers on both sides of the border.”
She has also said that the dispute settlement mechanism in place as part of the two countries’ trade agreement has ruled in Canada’s favour on supply management.
The United States will also impose 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports starting on March 12.
Trump has ordered his officials to review existing trade agreements, and to recommend further tariffs if any practices are deemed unfair to the United States.
