Montreal, Canada – Canada’s outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is meeting with provincial leaders to discuss looming tariffs that United States President-elect Donald Trump said he will impose on Canadian goods on his first day in office next week.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Trudeau said, “None of us wants to see tariffs erode a successful partnership between Canada and the United States.”
“But we will be ready with a strong, national response if we need one.”
Trump threatened to slap 25-percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico shortly after he won the US presidential election in November.
On his Truth Social website, Trump warned the measures would come into effect “on January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders” if Canada and Mexico fail to halt irregular migration and drug trafficking across their borders into the US.
The Republican leader’s warning has drawn growing concern among Canadian political and business leaders as his inauguration nears, with provincial premiers urging Trudeau to do whatever it takes to prevent the tariffs from coming into effect.
I’m meeting with the Premiers in Ottawa today. None of us wants to see tariffs erode a successful partnership between Canada and the United States. But we will be ready with a strong, national response if we need one.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 15, 2025
One of Trudeau’s top allies, former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, stepped down in late December amid what she said was a disagreement over how the Canadian government should respond to the potential tariffs.
“We need to take that threat extremely seriously,” Freeland wrote in her resignation letter.
The US and Canada are among each other’s top trading partners, and the two countries exchanged $2.7bn ($3.6bn Canadian) in goods and services daily across their shared border in 2023, according to Canadian government figures.
Since Trump made his tariffs threat, Trudeau — who is resigning as prime minister once his Liberal Party selects a new leader in early March — stressed the need for dialogue to uphold strong Canada-US ties.
He also previously said the Canadian government will “respond to unfair tariffs in a number of ways”, without elaborating on what specific measures might be taken.
The Canadian broadcaster CBC News reported last week that a document circulating among senior officials in Ottawa lists hundreds of US-made goods that Canada could hit with retaliatory tariffs.
The list includes American steel products, plastics and Florida orange juice, the CBC reported.
At Wednesday’s meeting with Trudeau, some premiers, including Doug Ford of Ontario, offered support for the prospect of retaliatory tariffs.
“I’m a strong believer in retaliatory tariffs,” Ford, a Conservative Party leader, said. “You can’t let someone hit you over the head with a sledgehammer without hitting them back twice as hard, in my opinion.”
Ford arrived at the roundtable with his own version of Trump’s trademark “Make America Great Again” hat: a blue cap embroidered with “Canada is not for sale”.
“We enter these negotiations from a position of strength, with as much leverage as possible,” Ford said from his seat at Trudeau’s side.
He also had a message for the US: “We are not the enemy. We’re your closest ally. We’re your closest friend.”
Industry groups in Canada are likewise bracing for Trump’s tariffs and the economic disruption they may spur.
On Wednesday, the Canadian trade union Unifor issued a public letter to the Trudeau administration outlining steps the country could take in the face of Trump’s tariff proposal.
They included the imposition of retaliatory tariffs “immediately” as well as emergency relief to industries at risk of layoffs as a result of any trade war.
“Never in modern history has Canada faced such a rebuke from its largest trading partner and closest ally,” union president Lana Payne said of Trump’s tariff statements.
“Threatening the livelihoods of Canadian workers — including tens of thousands of Unifor members in trade-exposed sectors — has crossed a dangerous line. This cannot be tolerated.”
Trudeau’s government has engaged in a flurry of diplomacy with Trump’s incoming administration since the tariff threat was issued.
The prime minister himself travelled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in November, and several ministers have since made the trip as well, in an effort to defuse economic tensions.
Just this week, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson travelled to Washington, DC, to propose a stronger energy alliance with the US, which imports millions of barrels of Canadian oil each day.
But while Trudeau has tried to rally a “Team Canada” approach to Trump’s economic sabre-rattling, some Canadian premiers have been meeting with the US president-elect separately, spurring fears of fractures in the unified front.
Premier Danielle Smith of Alberta, for instance, travelled solo to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend.
Posting pictures of her trip on social media, she wrote, “On behalf of Albertans, I will continue to engage in constructive dialogue and diplomacy with the incoming administration and elected federal and state officials from both parties.”