Fighting the bully: Canada throws a punch back at Trump

September 8, 2026 — 11:59am

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Canada’s Mark Carney has risked an escalation in trade hostilities with the US by following through with his foreshadowed retaliatory tariffs on US imports.

Just after midnight on Monday, Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on about $US20 billion ($28 billion) of US exports went live, making Canada, with China, the only significant economies willing to stand up to Donald Trump’s trade bullying.

The tariffs are a response to a similar dollar amount of new tariffs on Canada’s exports to the US that the Trump administration imposed last month after talks between the countries – held against the backdrop of Trump’s threat of those tariffs unless Canada made a range of trade concessions – broke down.

While willing to accept some duties and to tighten rules of origin that might have shifted more of the North American auto industry supply chain across the border into the US, last-minute demands from the US negotiators – abolishing Canadian French language local content rules and quotas, exclusive access to Canada’s minerals and restrictions on its ability to sign trade deals with other countries – caused Carney to end the negotiations.

Trump would plunge the US into crisis if he carried out his latest bizarre threat

Stephen BartholomeuszSenior business columnist

Senior business columnist

The US proceeded with its new tariffs on Canadian autos, dairy, alcohol, metals and consumer goods and now Canada has matched them on a dollar-for-dollar basis, targeting US apparel, timber, steel and aluminium, agricultural equipment, appliances, pulp and paper, plastics and electronics.

Both countries had pre-existing tariffs, dating back to Trump’s initial declaration of a trade war on the rest of the world last year, his singling out (absurdly) Canada for its alleged role in fentanyl exports to the US and, more recently, a 10 per cent........

© The Sydney Morning Herald