Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lashed-out at President Trump Thursday just hours after he announced new tariffs on foreign steel, saying his nation was prepared to announce “retaliatory” tariffs on American goods.
Trudeau addressed the nation in a formal address Thursday, calling Trump’s tariff’s “totally unacceptable” and a violation of over 150 years of trade and military cooperation.
“Today we found ourselves the target of punitive targets on Canadian aluminum and steel… Let me be clear these tariffs are totally unacceptable. For 150 years Canada has been the United States’ most steadfast ally,” said Trudeau.
“The numbers are clear, the United States has a $2 billion trade surplus in steel trade with Canada,” he added. “That Canada could be considered a national security threat to the United States is inconceivable.”
Well, he is not wrong. Trump’s decision here, as it relates to Canada and steel tariffs, makes zero sense. And the end result will be American consumers, American businesses, American workers, and American farmers are going to be the victims of these rash actions by our President. Get ready for some pain, fly-over nation. Hey forgotten man, guess what, the joke is on you.
While the cost of Mexican steel is much lower than US produced steel, the same cannot be said of Canadian steel. There is simply no reason to place a tariff on Canadian steel other than to try to use it as some sort of short-sighted leverage in the NAFTA renegotiation.
I just read we get 8% of our steel from Mother Russia.
So we put Tariffs on our friends in Canada, but not our sworn enemy?
We didn’t put them on the tariff list, I wonder why. I’m so not a fan of conspiracies, but I’m really starting to wonder if 45 is on the take and Putin has him by the balls. Nawl…that can’t be true. I refuse to believe that because of MAGA and America first…
Hahaha…Trump’s earlier threat of tariffs on aluminum encouraged Canadian makers to add a 10% surcharge to the price. So they have been profiting ever since!
Trump does one thing well in the business world: sell his name for properties. That’s really all he’s had real success in. Steaks, casinos, airline, mortgage company, fake university, vitamins and other supplements, vodka, etc., all failures.
No one knows how rich or poor he is (well, Mueller might). Some just believed him when he said he is worth $10B. Maybe his properties are worth that, if they are paid for. Don’t think that is the case.
Some day I hope that even a small percentage of people who voted for Trump wake up and realize you got conned by a con man. The con man runs a good con on a bunch of regular folks, and they voted for him. Now the con man is playing on the international level with seasoned pros who recognize con jobs. It leaves Trump with nothing, and that is why everything he touches turns to ■■■■■
After decades of other countries trading unfairly, dumping product in our markets, taking our jobs and livelihood finally we have a president who’s sticking up for us.
Canada IMO is our closest ally and I’d be very careful of anything that would hurt them financially. At the same time, I don’t know what the trade balance is? Trudeau only named steel and ignored the total. Here it is for the last number of years and it’s a negative number in the 10s of billions for most of the time…although, it was less than a negative 4 billion last year.
