The US and Canada’s trade war has deepened after talks between the two countries broke down at the last moment.
The North American neighbours failed to reach a deal late on Friday night, both sides said – and the US will now impose steep 50 per cent tariffs on some imports from Canada.
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A senior Trump administration official said Section 338 tariffs on about $20billion (£14.6billion) worth of Canadian goods would go into effect just after midnight on Saturday (5am BST).
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said he had suspended negotiations and vowed to retaliate “dollar for dollar” on the new levies.
Ex-Bank of England chief Mr Carney said the US terms were “unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal”.
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The collapse followed three straight days of talks in Washington DC between Canada’s Minister for Trade with the US, Dominic LeBlanc, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
Negotiators were racing to reach that midnight deadline to hammer out the details of the deal or risk a fresh wave of additional US tariffs on a wide range of Canadian goods.
Earlier, Donald Trump did not say whether a definitive deal had been agreed, but that it was “moving along”.
“We should be able to have a deal with Canada… I only make good deals,” he told reporters on Friday.
Details of a potential deal leaked to several media outlets suggested the US would halve tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium from 50 to 25 per cent, and reduce tariffs on Canadian cars from 25 to 15 per cent.
But those did not come to pass.
And while the new measures affect a relatively small share of Canadian exports, they add to existing US tariffs on steel, lumber and vehicles.
More to follow…
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