Trade negotiations with Canada stopped, Trump says
President Donald Trump says he’s stopped negotiating trade deals with Canada for now.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says the U.S. will immediately terminate trade talks with Canada and also hit the neighboring country with a new tariff rate in the next week.
Trump in a post on Truth Social cited a decision by Canada to leave in place its digital services tax on American companies, which he cast as as “a direct and blatant attack” on the United States.
“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,” Trump said. “We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.”
The announcement came after a White House news conference where Trump presented an ambiguous timeline for reciprocal tariffs he put on most other nations to go into effect. Trump introduced the tariffs in April and then paused them. If no further action is taken, they will resume on July 9. Trump’s administration was separately working on deals with Canada, Mexico and China.
The trade relationship between Canada and the United States appeared to be improving prior to the announcement. Trump said on June 16 during a meeting with Canada’s prime minister, “I’m sure we can work something out.”
But after the disagreement over the digital services act, Trump told reporters during an Oval Office event on June 27 the United States has “such power” over Canada, and it was “foolish” to collect the tax that impacts online advertisers and social media services.
Trump says new tariff rates on the way for other nations
At an earlier news conference on June 27, Trump said his administration would soon send out letters to U.S. trading partners informing them of their tariff rate.
“Maybe before, we’re going to send out a letter,” he told reporters. “We talked to many of the countries ,and we’re just going to tell them what they have to pay to do business in United States.”
Trump signaled later that countries could be facing an even shorter timeline to avoid potentially higher tariff rates.
“We can do whatever we want. We could extend it. We could make it shorter. I would like to make it shorter. I’d like to just send letters out to everybody,” Trump said in the previously-unscheduled White House news conference.
The president also lashed out at economists who predicted his administration’s tariffs could cause a recession. He said they should “go back to business school,” while defending his second-term levies.
“We’re taking in billions and billions of dollars from China and a lot of other countries,” Trump added.
Trump unveiled a slew of country-specific tariffs that roiled economic markets in April, but paused many of them as he negotiated trade deals and later lowered steep tariffs on China. Markets have since recovered. Stocks rose on June 27, after the administration said it solidified an agreement with Beijing; they fell after his social media post on Canada. But the markets rebounded just before close June 27, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite closing at all-time highs.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick boosted investor confidence when he said June 26 a framework agreement between the U.S. and Canada had been finalized and the administration was close to reaching deals with 10 nations.
His comments came after Trump said at an East Room event “we just signed with China yesterday.” The White House later clarified he was referring to an adjustment to an earlier framework that would expedite shipments of rare earth materials to the United States.
On June 27, Trump counted China in a tally of countries he said he’d made deals with, including the United Kingdom. The president also predicted a deal soon would come with India.
The latest round of talks between the European Union and the United States wrapped up not long before Trump addressed reporters. EU commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maroš Šefčovič said in a social media post he’d just spoken to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
Trump threatened in May to put a 50% tariff on the EU before returning to the July 9 deadline.
Contributing: Zac Anderson
