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Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to have his first phone conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump in the coming days, and Trump’s commerce secretary said Canada may get some reprieve from automobile tariffs.
Carney said Thursday that the president’s office reached out the previous evening to schedule a call. It would be the first conversation between the two leaders since Carney was sworn in as prime minister earlier this month as Trump pursued his trade war and repeatedly called for Canada’s annexation.
“I appreciate this opportunity to discuss how we can protect our workers and build our economies,” Carney said from Parliament Hill. “I will make clear to the president that those interests are best served by co-operation and mutual respect, including of our sovereignty.”
The call, which Carney said will take place within days, comes after Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to implement 25 per cent levies on all automobile and auto part imports — his latest move to upend global trade through a massive tariff agenda that pushed some automakers’ stock prices down on Thursday.
But Canadian cars may not be hit as hard as others. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Thursday that U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told him in a phone call Wednesday night that Canadian-made vehicles with 50 per cent or more American parts will not face the tariffs.
Ford said it was a productive conversation and Lutnick “knows how integrated the auto trade is” between the two countries — but the provincial government still doesn’t know when Canadian vehicle production might see the tariff break.
“A lot of the automobiles that are manufactured here in Ontario have 50, 60 per cent parts from the U.S.,” Ford said.
Ford said he’ll wait to respond to the latest tariffs until after April 2, when Trump is set to implement what he calls “reciprocal” tariffs by increasing U.S. duties to match the tax rates that other countries charge on imports.
Despite Lutnick’s reassurance, Trump has since escalated his threats against Canada. He posted on social media Thursday that if “the European Union works with Canada in order to do economic harm to the USA, large scale Tariffs, far larger than currently planned, will be placed on them both.”
The Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade, also called CUSMA, was negotiated during the first Trump administration to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement. It boosted rules requiring that a majority of parts in an automobile be North American in order for the vehicle to be tariff-free.
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