“We’re ready with a response, a purposeful, forceful but reasonable, immediate response,” Trudeau said.
Canada stands ready to retaliate if U.S. President Donald Trump decides to impose tariffs on Feb. 1, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says.
“We’re ready with a response, a purposeful, forceful but reasonable, immediate response,” Trudeau said in Toronto before a Jan. 31 meeting of the Council on Canada-U.S. Relations.
The prime minister’s remarks come a day after Trump
told reporters in the White House he would follow through with his tariff threat against Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1, for “a number of reasons.”
“No. 1 is the people that have poured into our country so horribly and so much,” he said, referring to illegal migrants crossing the border from Canada and Mexico into the United States.
“No. 2 are the drugs, fentanyl, and everything else that have come into the country. And No. 3 are the massive subsidies that we’re giving to Canada and to Mexico in the form of deficits.”
Trump said he would impose 25 percent tariffs which “may or may not rise with time.” The president also said a decision on imposing tariffs on oil imports could be made that evening.
Trudeau said it’s not known “precisely” what the U.S. tariffs could look like. He said Trump is “still committed to placing tariffs on Canada, starting as early as tomorrow, possibly.”
Ottawa has not said in detail how it plans to retaliate, but Trudeau previously said he agrees with the principle of a “dollar-for-dollar” retaliatory approach. Canada targeted vast sectors of the U.S. economy with tariffs during the 2018-2019 trade war, hitting goods from whisky to dishwashers.
Three Canadian ministers were in Washington this week to make a diplomatic push to avert the tariffs. Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly
met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Jan. 29, but said she didn’t gain more clarity on the U.S. tariff strategy.
Public Safety Minister David McGuinty was also in the U.S. capital to discuss Canada’s $1.3 billion border security plan, established after Trump first made the tariff threat in late November.
Trudeau said Canada’s border is “safe and secure” and noted that less than 1 percent of the fentanyl and illegal crossings entering into the United States come from Canada. He mentioned Ottawa has
stopped the practice of “flagpoling,” where temporary residents would cross into the United States and back into Canada to jump the queue and obtain immediate immigration services, causing a strain on border officers.
Immigration Canada has also cracked down on the abuse of the visa program, Trudeau noted. Foreign nationals are
using it to gain entry into Canada to then cross illegally into the United States.
“This is real progress, as the President’s Commerce Secretary nominee acknowledged the other day,” Trudeau said in reference to the Jan. 29 senate confirmation hearing of Howard Lutnick.
Trump’s pick to run commerce said Canada was “acting swiftly” to address border concerns and that if it executes its border plan there would be no tariffs.
There has been a marked increase in the involvement of Canada-based criminal organizations in the manufacturing and exporting of fentanyl, according to the 2024
public report from the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC).
The amount of fentanyl that was
intercepted by the United States at the Canadian border in fiscal year 2024 was, however, still small in comparison to what enters from Mexico, at 43 pounds versus 21,000 pounds. Marijuana (6,800 pounds) and cocaine (2,400 pounds) were the drugs seized in most quantity by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Illegal crossings from Canada into the United States are also an issue, with CBP
registering 199,000 encounters with removable non-citizens in fiscal 2024. Those encounters totalled 2.1 million at the U.S. southern border. Even though there was drastically more illegal migration coming from Mexico, there are more individuals on a U.S. terrorist watchlist who crossed from Canada, 358 compared to 52 at the southern border.
TD bank economists said in a Jan. 21
report that the trade deficit the United States has with Canada is due to energy exports. If energy is taken out of the equation, then “the scales tip into America’s favour.”
Canada is the United States’ largest oil supplier, accounting for
roughly half of U.S. petroleum imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Trump recently
said the United States doesn’t need Canadian oil and has signed several executive orders to boost oil exploration and production to supercharge the economy and reduce his country’s foreign dependencies.
