Commercial trucks drive toward the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge border crossing to the United States on Feb. 4, in Niagara Falls, Ont.Joe Raedle/Getty Images
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick says that although tariffs on Canada and Mexico will go into effect Tuesday, it will be up to President Donald Trump to determine whether they will actually be as high as 25 per cent, as originally planned.
After two months of tariff threats from the White House, this week could see the first punitive levies placed on Canadian goods by this country’s most important customer, measures that could have a major impact on some of Canada’s biggest industries. Mr. Trump is expected to address a joint session of Congress Tuesday night where he may lay out more of his tariff-laden international trade policies.
The President threatened 25-per-cent, across-the-board tariffs on Canada and Mexico earlier this year over what he called their failure to stop “illegal migration” and smuggling of the opioid fentanyl into U.S. territory. In early February, he delayed these tariffs – which would be 10 per cent for Canadian energy and critical minerals – for 30 days after Canada and Mexico promised more measures to combat the illicit movement of people and drugs into the United States.
Mr. Lutnick told Fox News on Sunday that both countries have “done a very reasonable job” in securing their shared borders with the U.S. and suggested that the overall tariff applied could be smaller.
“Maybe the 25-per-cent tariff doesn’t go into effect on Tuesday. Maybe he’s able to negotiate it down, given that they have shown some willingness to help on the border,” he said of the President.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller said in an interview aired Sunday that Ottawa has received no indication from Washington on whether it can avoid Mr. Trump’s levies.
“There’s no certainty on this,” Mr. Miller told CTV’s Question Period. “It’ll be hanging over our head until we know, and we’ll probably know at the same time Canadians know.”
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Canada in the past month has appointed a former Mountie, Kevin Brosseau, as fentanyl czar, and Canadian law enforcement has announced successive drug busts of fentanyl and put new restrictions on precursor chemicals used to make the opioid. It has also used newly acquired helicopters, drones and surveillance gear to step up patrols at popular locations where people try to slip across the Canada-U.S. border.
Mr. Lutnick touted a drop in illegal crossing attempts from Mexico into the U.S. as evidence that Mr. Trump’s hardball approach is working. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol on Saturday announced 8,326 people were caught at the U.S.’s southern border in February, “making it the lowest month in recorded history.”
Statistics from the federal Immigration Minister’s office show the number of people apprehended trying to cross clandestinely into the U.S. from Canada was 64 in the first three weeks of February, ending Feb. 22. The data was provided to the immigration department by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The full number for January was 359 people, compared with 370 in December and 533 in November. These numbers are all down from a high of 3,437 last June.
Mr. Lutnick said the Trump administration is still concerned about fentanyl making its way into the U.S. from Canada and Mexico.
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“Fentanyl continues to come into this country and continues to murder our people, and the ingredients are made in China,” he told Fox News. “They’re sent to Mexico and Canada, and then they come and attack our country. And that’s got to end.” Fentanyl entering the U.S. from Canada is a tiny fraction of what comes from Mexico.
Mr. Trump is also expected on Tuesday to raise tariffs on China to 20 per cent from 10 per cent, which is set to take place unless the country ends fentanyl trafficking into the U.S., Mr. Lutnick said.
Mr. Trump, who in January indicated that he planned to use “economic force” to coerce Canadians into agreeing to be annexed by the U.S. as the “51st state,” is continuing to pile new tariff threats on Canada – levies that by all accounts would stack or apply on top of each other.
He has announced 25-per-cent tariffs on global imports of steel and aluminum into the U.S., including from Canada, which are set to take effect March 12. He has also warned that in early April, the U.S. will apply additional “reciprocal tariffs” on countries, including Canada, for policies that his administration considers trade barriers – duties, value-added taxes or restrictions on American products.
On Saturday, the Trump administration ordered a new trade investigation that could heap more tariffs on imported lumber, adding to existing duties on Canadian softwood lumber as well as the fentanyl-related tariffs planned to take effect Tuesday.
Mr. Trump has justified the 25-per-cent tariffs by alleging that “a lot” of fentanyl enters the United States via Canada. His reasoning is at odds with statistics collected by the U.S. government. The data says border guards intercepted 19.5 kilograms of fentanyl along the Canadian border last year, which is 0.2 per cent of the nearly 11 tonnes intercepted in the U.S.
As The Globe and Mail recently reported, however, court records and interviews indicate that about one-third of this 19.5-kg tally was seized in Spokane, Wash. – more than 150 kilometres from the border with Canada – as part of an investigation that led to charges against three Mexican nationals. That bust has no known connection to Canada.
Speaking in London Sunday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said new border-security measures are working and have resulted in “significant reductions in even the small amount of fentanyl that was passing across” the shared border with the United States.
He warned that Canada would retaliate against the United States with countertariffs if Mr. Trump imposes levies on Tuesday. “We will have a strong, unequivocal and proportional response as Canadians expect.”
As Ottawa outlined earlier this year, an initial round of retaliatory tariffs from Canada would hit $30-billion worth of American products across more than 1,200 categories of goods.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Sunday that revenues from any retaliatory tariffs Canada imposes on U.S. goods should be used to cut taxes for Canadian workers and businesses to help bolster the economy.
Regardless of what Mr. Trump does, Mr. Poilievre said, Canada cannot “rely on the Americans any more.” He said Canada has to take steps to build the pipelines and export facilities necessary to sell petroleum to overseas markets. This means “greenlighting massive resource projects to bring home our jobs, businesses and money and to become less dependent on the Americans.”
He said a Conservative government would eliminate the federal sales tax on new homes and persuade provinces to remove their levies in order to boost homebuilding in Canada as well as demand for Canadian softwood lumber.
Ottawa on Friday also signalled that it is willing to discuss a new request from Washington that Ottawa match any U.S. tariffs imposed on China to create what U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is calling “fortress North America.” Mr. Bessent had said Friday that Mexico has proposed matching U.S. tariffs on China in a move that he described as “very interesting” and one that Canada should copy.
The proposal came from Mexican government efforts to dissuade Mr. Trump from proceeding with his tariffs.
“I think it would be a nice gesture if the Canadians did it also so in a way we could have fortress North America from the flood of Chinese imports that’s coming out of the most unbalanced economy in the history of modern times,” Mr. Bessent said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
With reports from Kristy Kirkup in Ottawa, Paul Waldie in London and Reuters