US May Hit Canada with Dairy, Lumber Tariffs Soon

By Staff, Agencies

US President Donald Trump threatened new tariffs as soon as Friday on Canadian lumber and dairy products, a day after offering Canada a one-month reprieve on punishing, virtually across-the-board 25% tariffs. 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.”

“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.

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.

Stocks, which were lower to start the day after a mixed bag of a jobs report, initially fell after Trump’s tariff threat but rose after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell offered a mostly positive outlook on the economy.

A Market strategist at Third Seven Capital, Michael Block said, “The market is having trouble digesting the multidimensional chess that Trump and his team are playing.”

Trump’s threat on Friday added more uncertainty into an economy that has shown cracks in its foundation and could be in danger of slipping if businesses and consumers grow nervous about the administration’s economic policy; layoffs are mounting, hiring is slowing, consumer confidence is eroding and inflation is picking up again.