Bessent Pumps Brakes on Trump’s Threat of 100 Percent Tariffs on Canadian Imports

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is now saying that President Trump’s declaration that he could impose a 100 percent tariff on Canadian goods is not an imminent threat. Mr. Bessent says such an escalation would only take place if Canada and the People’s Republic of China took further steps to remove their respective trade barriers.Mr. Trump on Saturday warned Prime Minister Carney that any trade deal made between his country and China would result in a 100 percent tariff on all Canadian goods entering the United States. He says Mr. Carney is allowing Canada to act as an intermediary for China shipping goods to the United States. “If Governor Carney 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,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life.”When asked about Mr. Trump’s threats, Mr. Bessent told ABC News’s “This Week” Sunday that the tariff is not being imposed under current conditions. He says the threat applies to further trade negotiations between Mr. Carney and President Xi. The recent trade deal made between the two countries merely lowers trade barriers rather than abolishing them, Mr. Bessent says. “There’s a possibility of 100 percent tariffs if they do a free trade deal,” Mr. Bessent said. “If they go further, if we see that the Canadians are allowing the Chinese to dump goods” into America, then the tariff will take effect, he said. “Just to be clear: the Canadians a few months ago joined the U.S. in putting high steel tariffs on China because the Chinese are dumping” steel, Mr. Bessent added. “It looks like Prime Minister Carney may have done some kind of about-face.”Mr. Carney says he does not expect to make any kind of grand deregulatory free trade agreement with China, however. According to the CBC, the prime minister told reporters at Ottawa on Sunday that he has “no intention” of negotiating the kind of agreement Mr. Bessent has warned about. “What we’ve done with China is to rectify some issues that have developed in the last couple of years,” Mr. Carney argued. The trade agreement he struck with Mr. Xi only applied to certain products, with Canada now expected to see an influx of Chinese electric vehicles due to a reduction in Mr. Carney’s tariffs on the vehicles, while China is expected to purchase more goods from Canada. On Sunday, Mr. Trump shared a video on Truth Social of officials from Ontario who pushed back against Mr. Carney’s new deal with China. The president called the video a “must watch.”“Canada is systematically destroying itself. The China deal is a disaster for them. Will go down as one of the worst deals, of any kind, in history. All their businesses are moving to the USA,” the president wrote. “I want to see Canada SURVIVE AND THRIVE!”In a follow-up post, Mr. Trump said that China is “successfully and completely taking over the once Great Country of Canada.”The tariffs Mr. Trump has been imposing on Canada and other nations are already subject to what could be landmark litigation at the Supreme Court. At oral arguments last year, a majority of the justices seemed skeptical that the president had the unilateral authority to simply declare emergencies based on the size of America’s trade deficit, and then use that as a justification to impose import taxes on any country in the world. Even if Mr. Trump’s tariffs are struck down, the damage between the American-Canadian alliance has already been done. Mr. Carney has said in the past that he enjoys a fairly good working relationship with Mr. Trump, including texting each other back and forth, though the prime minister had some especially harsh words for the president at Davos last week. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Mr. Carney said — without using Mr. Trump’s name — that leaders should dispel the notion that complying with strong-arm tactics from other governments will result in positive outcomes. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Mr. Carney said. “Over the past two decades a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” the prime minister declared.

Bessent Pumps Brakes on Trump’s Threat of 100 Percent Tariffs on Canadian Imports

Bessent Pumps Brakes on Trump’s Threat of 100 Percent Tariffs on Canadian Imports

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