Canada Targets US Imports to Counter ‘Nonsense’ Tariffs

Canada is responding to U.S. tariffs with its own 25% levy on American goods.

These counter tariffs, as Bloomberg News reported, are due to go into effect at 12:01 a.m. eastern time Thursday (March 13) and cover $20.8 billion in imports such as steel and aluminum products and consumer goods like computers and sports equipment.

As the report notes, the tariffs are in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada and other countries.

Melanie Joly, Canada’s foreign minister, told Bloomberg the American tariffs are “unjustified and unjustifiable, adding that she will bring the issue up to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Group of Seven foreign ministers meeting, which Canada is hosting this week in Quebec.

“We need to fight back against this nonsense,” Joly said.

The announcement came one day after Trump said that the tariffs will pay off by bringing manufacturing jobs to the U.S.

“The biggest win is not the tariff — that’s a big win, that’s a lot of money — but the biggest win is if they move into our country and produce jobs,” Trump said in an address to the Business Roundtable. “That’s a bigger win than the tariffs themselves.”

Trump argued that the higher the tariffs go, the more likely companies are to make their products in the U.S., and that some car companies have already halted their construction of plants in Mexico in favor of building them in the U.S.

However, a report by NBC News this week says that shifting manufacturing back to the U.S. will be easier said than done.

That report, citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, notes that just a fraction of American workers are employed by factories and farms compared with past decades, with most people in service jobs like healthcare, finance and software. Experts also say that focusing on domestic goods production could cost consumers while whittling away at America’s growing edge in the knowledge economy.

PYMNTS Intelligence research has found that upwards of half of consumers who were knowledgeable about the tariffs said their finances would be impacted, with at least three quarters expecting either to have to pay higher prices or deal with product shortages.

“What’s surprising is that this not-so-rosy sentiment is consistent across income, financial lifestyle (e.g., paycheck-to-paycheck versus not), and demographic cohorts,” PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster wrote in a recent column. “Most every consumer views the impact of the proposed tariffs as more negative than positive.”