US President Donald Trump threatened to hit Canada with a 100% tariff on all Canadian goods if the country’s prime minister strikes a trade deal with China.
“If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A.,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Saturday.
Tensions between Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney have escalated in recent days, after Carney gave a speech in Davos, Switzerland, pushing against the world’s great powers.
He recently met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and announced their countries had reached a trade deal that included electric vehicles.
At the time, Trump hailed the potential deal as “a good thing”.
It is unclear if that deal has come into effect, or if Trump was referring to it specifically. The BBC has reached out to the White House, Carney’s office and Canada’s minister responsible for US-Canada trade for comment.
In his Saturday post, Trump referred to the prime minister as “Governor Carney” and wrote that if “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken.”
Trump did not provide a timeline or more information about the threatened tariff. Last year, when he first threatened new tariffs on the US northern neighbour, Trump began calling Canada the US’s “51st state” with Carney as its “governor”, and suggested he may try to acquire the country entirely.
While the countries’ relationship had been improving in recent months, Trump’s push to take control of Greenland and his comments about Nato had put him at odds with Canadian and European leaders. Carney did not mention the president by name in his speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland this week, but he still angered Trump.
“Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump said in his own address, which followed Carney’s.