The United States has announced a sweeping 50% tariff on Canadian goods, citing discriminatory treatment of American alcohol, automobiles and dairy products. The duties are expected to take effect Aug. 19 and, unusually, will reach some products that would ordinarily receive preferential treatment under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement. Energy, potash, fish and critical minerals are among the reported exemptions.
It may appear that U.S. President Donald Trump’s move to hit many Canadian products with new tariffs of 50 per cent came out of the blue, but there are clear signs of what’s driving the tactic.
Monday’s announcement comes as the U.S. pushes for significant changes to the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), changes that would lock any Canadian trade concessions into the text of a trade deal.
The Trump administration wants to wipe out as much of Canada’s leverage in those CUSMA talks as possible.
This guy gets it. Canada is not going to win with Carney’s strategy.
On USMCA, there’s a reason that Professor Ian Lee of Carleton University doesn’t get much time on legacy media. He speaks more truth to power than they can handle.
1⃣ We are far more dependent on the 🇺🇸 than they are on us.
2⃣ If 🇨🇦 cannot maintain the current level of free trade… pic.twitter.com/Hl1sXfV7sp— RMC86 (@RMC19861987) July 19, 2026
This idiot doesn’t get it.
It’s unbelievable how far the Canada-U.S. relationship has deteriorated, and it’s hard to see it recovering. The anti-Canadian rhetoric and attitudes coming out of Washington are likely at their lowest point since calls to take over parts of British Columbia were expressed in the slogan “54-40 or Fight.”
Meanwhile … Hoekstra says Canadians ‘don’t think very highly’ of U.S. as Trump threatens new tariffs
Listen to Mark Warner. Every word “So it’s not so much are we discriminating against American products in the areas that he’s, he’s identified, but are we doing that relative to other countries and that there may be some factual questions there.”
“We’re kind of in It’s 5440 in… pic.twitter.com/OGHgWHtkOw
— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) July 21, 2026
Carney the great negotiator.
Pete Hoekstra, speaking at a conference in Edmonton on Monday, said that Mr. Carney made the pitch during an Oct. 7, 2025, meeting at the White House. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright were eager to take the deal, Mr. Hoekstra said, but President Donald Trump held them back.
The U.S. said Monday it will be imposing an additional 50 per cent tariff on Canadian imports due to retaliatory and “discriminatory” measures Canada took in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The new tariff will take effect 30 days after Trump signs the executive order and will apply to goods covered by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on free trade, a senior administration official told reporters on background.
Trump’s new 50% tariff targets even CUSMA-compliant goods
Maybe Carney should be sent on a long vacation.
Premier Doug Ford says U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to introduce new tariffs on Canada over northern Ontario wildfire smoke that’s drifted south of the border is a “bunch of rubbish.”
“Rather than sit there and complain, why don’t we see some help from President Trump. Send up some water bombers, send up some wildland firefighters, but then again, they have thousands of fires going in the U.S. right now, but you don’t hear Canada ever complain,” Ford said at a news conference Monday.
The collapse in American-Canadian relations since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House is usually measured by tariffs, trade agreements, and diplomatic insults. But the real cost is being paid in border towns.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Michigan, where deteriorating relations between Washington and Ottawa are hurting communities.
Amid the confusion over precisely what deal Canada struck with the U.S. to open the Gordie Howe International Bridge, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has weighed in on social media with his own calculations.
“The USA struck a great deal with respect to the Gordie Howe Bridge,” he wrote in a social media post on Saturday. “Before this deal we got NOTHING. Now, the U.S. gets 50% of net revenues until 2041 and a say in setting the tolls. Our share is before interest and principal.”
Summertime, and the living isn’t easy for U.S. workers dependent on Canadian tourism. Boycotting travel is a trade irritant unlike any other, and one the American ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, sheepishly raised during an interview with CTV earlier this month in Vancouver.
Canadians are exercising this political defiance in opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada. Leger polling suggests 67 per cent of those who decided to boycott travel to the U.S. in 2026 have done so because of the political climate and tensions between the two countries. An expensive U.S. dollar also makes it easier to say no.
I don’t agree with the permanence the author predicts.
Canadian visits to the US have been trending higher and I suspect our weakening standard of living keeps as many home as politics.
Mexico’s foreign secretary says his country isn’t looking to cut a deal with the U.S. if it means abandoning the trilateral trade pact with Canada.
When asked Friday if Mexico would go it alone on a trade deal with the U.S., Roberto Velasco Álvarez shook his head and said all three countries that make up the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) have bilateral issues to work on.
They did last time freezing out Freeland.
Forty-two per cent of Canadian manufacturers are considering shifting production to the United States or have already done so. A survey from KPMG released in July found that 57 per cent had paused, reduced, or cancelled capital investment projects in Canada. That is a potential exodus in the making, and it could gut what is left of manufacturing in this country.
The so-called dark art of political spin is nothing more than politicians proclaiming failure as success or, in the case of Mark Carney, that capitulation is rather a resounding victory.
Canada’s new deal — a “bribe” according to one economist — on the Gordie Howe Bridge has been trumpeted by the prime minister as a sign of astute negotiations with the United States when it is really caving in to the demands of Donald Trump.
The federal government is refusing to release the details of a revised agreement governing the Gordie Howe International Bridge after Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed Canada will share future toll revenues with the United States, departing from the original 2012 agreement.
Blacklock’s Reporter said the issue surfaced after U.S. President Donald Trump announced on social media that he had negotiated more favourable terms for the United States.
A year and a half after Canadians started ditching their trips south of the border, at least some of them are hitting the road again.
In June, Canadian resident return trips from the U.S. inched up 3.2 per cent compared to the same month last year, according to new data from Statistics Canada.
It’s the third month in a row that inbound travel from the U.S. by Canadians has increased, following a rise of 9.5 per cent in May and 1.4 per cent in April.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is defending the deal brokered between Canada and the United States to open the delayed Gordie Howe International Bridge and insists the profits split with the Americans will be minimal.
“The word ‘net’ does a lot of work in this. We are sharing after Canada is paid back,” Carney said in an interview with CTV Calgary’s Tara Nelson at the Calgary Stampede on Sunday when asked about the agreement.
