Vehicles cross the Ambassador Bridge, which carries about 25 per cent of all trade between the U.S. and Canada, in Windsor, Ont., April 1, 2025.JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP/Getty Images
Canada won’t impose retaliatory tariffs on most U.S. food and other basic necessities that could drive up the cost of living for Canadians, or on components that are essential to avoiding job losses in key sectors of the economy, two federal trade advisers say.
The two advisers – David MacNaughton, Canada’s former envoy to Washington, and Senator Hassan Yussuff, ex-Canadian Labour Congress president – made their comments to The Globe and Mail on Tuesday, the day before U.S. President Donald Trump was set to announce global tariffs in the White House Rose Garden.
The question of how to respond to Mr. Trump’s escalating trade war has loomed large over the federal election campaign. Punitive countertariffs would hurt U.S. businesses, but could also raise prices for Canadians if companies pass those costs along to them.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, who is running in the federal election as Liberal Leader, has not said publicly how he will respond to Mr. Trump’s next round of tariffs.
Mr. Carney paused his campaign on Tuesday and said he is heading back to Ottawa for meetings ahead of Mr. Trump’s Wednesday announcement.
In Winnipeg Tuesday, he reiterated what he told Mr. Trump last Friday, that “we will put in place some retaliatory measures if there are additional measures put against Canada.”
Mr. Carney also spoke to the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, on Tuesday about how to fight the Trump trade war and ways to increase trade between Canada and Mexico, his office said in a statement.
Mr. MacNaughton and Mr. Yussuff, who are both on Mr. Carney’s U.S. trade advisory panel, said Ottawa won’t impose levies on most U.S. food and components that could hike costs to families or cause mass layoffs or plant closings.
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“If people are buying food, why would you hit them? Similarly with things that are going to cause more pain for people,” Mr. Yussuff said. “The fact of the matter is we all have to live and there are some things we need. Basic food if you have to import it, it is important that people have good nutrition and not to punish them for doing so.”
Canada has imposed tariffs on some U.S. fruits, grains and meats that it believes can be replaced either by Canadian or competitively priced offshore products, Mr. Yussuff said. “You can get Mexican strawberries, for example, that you can also get from greenhouses in Canada without having to buy from the Americans.”
Mr. MacNaughton said the whole point of the tariffs is to go after Mr. Trump’s political allies in Congress and in business.
“You have to figure out where are some real pain points for Trump that aren’t pain points for us,” Mr. MacNaughton said, adding 250-per-cent tariffs on Elon Musk’s Teslas would make a point.
Nor will the Canadian government hit the U.S. with dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs, they said, an idea Mr. Carney campaigned on during the Liberal leadership but has since backed away from.
Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks at a Liberal Party election campaign rally in Winnipeg, April 1, 2025.Shannon Vanraes/Reuters
“There is a sense that dollar-for-dollar may have more of a punishing impact here. So there are places where we can do more damage and I think they are trying to calibrate to see what we can do in a more sophisticated way than just matching dollar-for-dollar,” Mr. Yussuff said.
Mr. Trump has a long list of complaints against Canada such as the digital services tax, the GST, supply management, autos and intellectual property protection rules. The U.S. Trade Representative Office also released a report Monday, citing Quebec’s Bill 96 language law as a concern to U.S. business.
Mr. Carney said Tuesday he’s made it clear that there are some topics that he views as non-negotiable: language and culture policy, as well as the supply management of the country’s agricultural sector.
“I have a lot of experience in negotiations. And in a negotiation, if you say something is off the table, it’s off the table,” he said. “The French language is off the table. Supply management is off the table. Culture is off the table.”
Federal finance department officials have a list of 4,000 U.S. goods, valued at $155-billion, that could face tariffs, although Mr. Carney has said he will take a judicious approach to cause maximum harm to the Americans and minimum hardship to Canadians. Canada has already imposed tariffs valued at $60-billion.
A final decision on the value and type of goods to be tariffed will be made at a federal cabinet meeting either late Wednesday or Thursday morning, two federal sources said. They said Mr. Carney was briefed by the Privy Council Office on Monday on Canadian tariffs that could be imposed.
The Globe is not identifying the sources who were not authorized to discuss the issue.
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the White House is considering imposing global tariffs of up to 20 per cent, to hit almost all U.S. trading partners.
The two federal sources said no one in the Canadian government has been told what level of tariffs Mr. Trump will unveil even though Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc has been in regular talks with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick while Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has been dealing with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
That should not come as a surprise to anyone that has had to deal with the Trump administration, according to Brian Clow, who handled U.S. trade talks as deputy chief of staff to former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
“Countries, including allies like Canada, shouldn’t count on a heads-up from the U.S. – that’s not how this U.S. administration has typically operated on tariffs. The U.S. announced most of their tariff decisions publicly without a courtesy heads-up,” Mr. Clow said.
Mr. Clow said Ottawa has spent months building and refining various retaliatory-response scenarios. The size of Canada’s retaliatory package will depend on the magnitude of the final U.S. tariff decisions.
“Canada and many other countries are committed to robust retaliation, which is a good thing because it’s pretty much the only thing the Americans actually notice,” he said.
Mr. Clow said the Americans have promised a complicated patchwork of tariffs that “I’m sure U.S. officials are having difficulty sorting through.”
Mr. Trump has already imposed 25-per-cent tariffs on aluminum and steel from all countries, including Canada.
Mr. Trump also threatened to impose tariffs of 25 per cent on most Canadian imports and 10 per cent on energy, critical minerals and potash on April 2 – unless action was taken to stop the flow of fentanyl and illegal migrations into the United States. And last week he announced a 25-per-cent tariff on all global auto and most auto parts imports to take effect Thursday.
An Ontario government official said the big worry is if Mr. Trump stacks the 25-per-cent fentanyl and border-related tariffs on top of the reciprocal levies he is announcing Wednesday.
The official said it’s highly unlikely that Ottawa would impose reciprocal tariffs on U.S. autos and auto parts because that would cause even greater harm to Ontario’s auto industry, which employees half a million Canadian workers.
The Globe is not identifying the official who was not authorized to discuss the matter.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford took to U.S. television to make a last-ditch plea for American legislators and state governors to press the Trump administration to abandon its tariff plans, apologizing to Americans that Canada has no choice but to retaliate “appropriately but hard.”
“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. Let’s work together,” Mr. Ford told NBC News’ Meet the Press. “Let’s be the two strongest nations in the world.”
He warned that the U.S. tariffs would harm the U.S. economy and force plants dependent on Canadian-made materials to close, while sinking stock markets further.
“I don’t call it liberation day for Americans, I call it termination day, because there are people going to be laid off,” Mr. Ford said. “Assembly lines will shut down. You can’t just cut off your largest customer in the world.”
He called instead for greater U.S.-Canada co-operation on critical minerals and energy and other areas, to counter the geopolitical threat posed by China.
Asked about his comments last week that Mr. Lutnick and other U.S. politicians did not know what the President was going to announce, Mr. Ford said it was hard to figure out what was going to happen and that many U.S. lawmakers he has spoken with seem in the dark about the President’s plans.
With a report from Bill Curry and Jeff Gray
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to remove an incorrect reference to Canadian tariffs on Florida oranges.