Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks at a rally in Montreal on March 27, 2025.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney vowed to retaliate against Donald Trump’s new tariffs on foreign-made autos but warned that Canada must start fundamentally reshaping its economy to reduce dependence on the United States and create “strategic economic autonomy in this country.”
He said he’s confident that he can ensure the survival of Canada’s auto sector, naming this and a number of other industries that he said Ottawa, the provinces and businesses must protect and build up, including critical metals and minerals, artificial intelligence, as well as green and petroleum energy sectors.
“It is clear that the United States is no longer a reliable partner. It is possible that, with comprehensive negotiations, we will be able to restore some trust, but there will be no turning back,” Mr. Carney told reporters in Ottawa.
“We will need to dramatically reduce our reliance on the United States,” he said. “We will need to pivot our trade relationships elsewhere.”
Mr. Carney said he expects to talk to Mr. Trump in the coming days, revealing that the White House had reached out Wednesday to arrange a call. It would be the first time the two have talked since Mr. Carney took office March 14 and “only the beginning of a negotiation, not the end,” he told reporters.
He did not detail what new retaliatory measures he would pursue, saying he would reveal them only when necessary. Canada has already imposed countertariffs on about $60-billion in U.S. goods.
Mr. Carney spoke as Canada braces for new U.S. tariffs that threaten to damage Canada’s auto sector next week as well as what the White House calls “reciprocal tariffs” intended to hit any levies, taxes or trade barriers in foreign countries it considers unfair to Americans. More than one million cars and light trucks are manufactured in Canada for export to the United States. These represent more than 90 per cent of Canada’s production.
Carney calls Trump’s tariffs on vehicles ‘a direct attack’ on Canada and its auto workers
Since taking office in January, Mr. Trump has triggered job losses and discouraged investment by threatening, and in some cases imposing, tariffs on Canadian imports as well as those of other countries. The moves put Canada’s most crucial trading partnership at risk and have dominated the campaign for the April 28 federal election.
Asked whether he has a strategy to safeguard Canada’s auto sector, Mr. Carney, who is campaigning as Liberal Leader, referenced a pledge he made earlier this week. This commitment included a $2-billion fund to boost the domestic auto sector’s competitiveness, upgrade workers’ skills and build a Canadian supply chain for autos from raw materials to finished vehicles.
He said the federal government would switch to only buying autos made in Canada, saying Ottawa purchases 40,000 a year. “It’s part of an integrated industrial strategy that has the objective of having strategic economic autonomy here in Canada.”
Mr. Carney said Mr. Trump is trying to substantially “restructure his economy, our economy, and the global economy.” The U.S. President has said that he wants to use tariffs to remedy unfair foreign trade practices by forcing manufacturers to move manufacturing back to the United States.
“The old relationship we had with the U.S. based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military co-operation is over,” Mr. Carney said.
He cautioned that this will be hard. “The road ahead will be long. There is no silver bullet. There is no quick fix.”
Mr. Carney noted that the federal government has already announced a tariff relief package for workers and companies. Ottawa is waiving the one-week waiting period before collecting employment insurance; allowing workers to collect before they have exhausted severance pay; and making it easier to access this support. The federal government will also temporarily allow companies to defer corporate income-tax payments as well as remittances of the goods and services tax and harmonized sales tax.
Coyne: Canada’s existential election has very quickly become unserious
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre talked tough Thursday when speaking about the nascent trade war, telling Mr. Trump to “knock it off” and stop damaging what he called the best bilateral trading relationship in the world.
During a press conference in the Vancouver suburb of Coquitlam, Mr. Poilievre did not focus on the auto industry. But, the evening prior, at another event in Quebec City, he promised that a Conservative government would replace wages by auto workers and ensure businesses in the industry have the liquidity to survive this tumultuous period.
On Thursday, he rattled off a host of ways in which a Conservative government would improve the autonomy and resiliency of the Canadian economy, including by cutting taxes and speeding up permitting for the oil, gas, mining, lumber, agriculture, fisheries and manufacturing sectors.
Mr. Poilievre added that his government would build pipelines and LNG plants as well as aggressively promote mines and other resource infrastructure with the goal of trading outside of the United States.
Royal Bank of Canada CEO Dave McKay, in an interview, said Canadians shouldn’t lose sight of the fact Mr. Trump’s actions contravene the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement he negotiated. “It’s important to remind people what he’s doing is illegal,” Mr. McKay said.
Mr. Trump is trying to supersede this agreement by arguing his tariffs are for national-security interests, but Mr. McKay said there’s been heavy lobbying by Canadians, and it’s resonated. “There’s been, at the Washington level but also at the governor level and the state level, an enormous amount of effort to remind them of the benefits of cross border trade, and they’re very aware of it.”
The question, then, is whether Mr. Trump’s national-security argument will be challenged in court – by Americans, he said.
Canada will soon respond to new tariffs on imported vehicles announced by U.S. President Donald Trump and could impose retaliatory measures against the United States, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Wednesday.
Reuters
Ontario Premier Doug Ford Ontario said Thursday that U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has told him some Canadian-made vehicles could see lower tariffs than the 25-per-cent tariff rate the White House has announced on foreign-made vehicles for early April. But, he added, Canada still needed to fight back against the levies.
A senior Ontario government source, clarifying Mr. Ford’s remarks, said Mr. Lutnick told the Premier in a phone call Wednesday night said that finished vehicles entering the United States from Canada containing more than 50-per-cent U.S.-made parts would be exempt from U.S. tariffs. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source as they were not authorized to discuss the negotiations in public.
In some cases, previous assurances given to Canada by Mr. Lutnick have not materialized. Under Mr. Trump’s executive order, Canadian-made cars would already face a 25-per-cent tariff on the value of their non-U.S. parts, not the entire price of the vehicle.
A White House official later told The Globe and Mail in an e-mail that Mr. Lutnick did not make any such assurance to Mr. Ford and reiterated Mr. Trump’s assertion that the auto tariffs as announced would be permanent. The Globe is not naming the official because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Asked about the denial, Ford spokeswoman Ivana Yelich replied with an e-mail that did not address the contradiction.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Thursday he amended his party’s campaign schedule to go to Windsor, the automotive capital of the country where he lived as a young person, after Mr. Trump unveiled his tariff plan.
“This feels like a betrayal, a gut punch for absolutely no reason.”
On Thursday, the NDP released a four-part plan it said would help auto workers. In addition to employment insurance changes, the party says every dollar collected from counter tariffs should go directly to support workers and communities hit hardest.
The party also said it wants to see federal departments and agencies, including Canada Post and the RCMP, purchase Canadian-made vehicles.
As well, the NDP said it would “use every legal tool available” to bar auto sector companies that received Canadian taxpayer dollars in the last five years from gutting plants or shipping out machinery and tools. Canadian taxpayers have pledged more than $30-billion in investment to auto sector over the last five years, the NDP said. Mr. Singh said companies that received public money shouldn’t be allowed to strip Canadian plants and ship out machinery and tools paid for by Canadians.
Mr. Singh said companies that want to sell in Canada must make sure there is a footprint in this country.
Mr. Trump put 25-per-cent tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum earlier this month, and is set to hit Canada, and other countries, with fresh levies April 2. Across-the-board tariffs of 25 per cent on most Canadian imports – 10 per cent on energy, critical minerals and potash – were imposed in March with a month-long reprieve for goods in compliance with the USMCA until April 2.
Early Thursday in a social-media post, Mr. Trump threatened Canada and the European Union if they worked together to “do economic harm” to the United States.
“If the European Union works with Canada in order to do economic harm to the USA, large scale Tariffs, far larger than currently planned, will be placed on them both in order to protect the best friend that each of those two countries has ever had!” he wrote on Truth Social.
With reports from Mike Hager in Vancouver, Kristy Kirkup in Windsor and Tim Kiladze in Toronto