A day after offering Canada a one-month reprieve on punishing, virtually across-the-board 25% tariffs, President Donald Trump has threatened new tariffs as soon as Friday on Canadian lumber and dairy products. It’s yet another twist in a serpentine trade policy that seems to shift on an hourly basis.
“Canada has been ripping us off for years on lumber and on dairy products,” Trump said in an Oval Office address Friday, citing Canada’s roughly 250% tariff on US dairy exports to the country. Trump said America would match those tariffs dollar-for-dollar.
“We may do it as early as today, or we’ll wait until Monday or Tuesday,” Trump said. “We’re going to charge the same thing. It’s not fair. It never has been fair, and they’ve treated our farmers badly.”
Canadian trade minister Mary Ng pushed back on Trump’s comments, saying his claim that Canada was “ripping off” the United States was “not true.”
Ng said that Trump’s proposed reciprocal tariffs on dairy and lumber are “completely unjustified.”
“I learned about it just as I was walking into this press conference,” Ng told reporters. “These tariffs if imposed in that order of magnitude is completely unjustified.”
Trump’s announcement gave investors, businesses and consumers another strong dose of whiplash. Just one day earlier, on Thursday, Trump announced a one-month pause on all tariffs on Canada and Mexico on products that comply with the US-Mexico-Canada free trade treaty, known as the USMCA. That had, at least temporarily, given many industries, especially autos and agriculture, a major sigh of relief.
On Friday Trump said more “changes and adjustments” on tariffs should be expected in the future.
“There’ll always be some modifications,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “If you have a wall in front of you, sometimes you have to go around the wall instead of through it.”
