WASHINGTON - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday railed against what he called tremendously high Canadian tariffs on dairy and lumber, and said his administration could impose reciprocal tariffs on Canadian products as early as Friday.
“Canada has been ripping us off on for years on tariffs for lumber and for dairy products,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “They’ll be met with the exact same tariffs, unless they drop it, and ... we may do it as early as today or we’ll wait ‘til Monday or Tuesday.”
Trump also mentioned India’s high tariff rates, but said India had agreed to lower its import duties.
On Thursday, Trump suspended tariffs of 25% imposed this week on most goods from Canada and Mexico. In a Fox Business Network interview aired earlier on Friday he said he had wanted to implement the 30-day break for goods compliant with a regional free trade deal to help automakers. But he added that the reprieve was a short-term measure and tariffs could go up over time.
“I thought it would be a fair thing to do, and so I gave them a little bit of a break for this short period of time,” Trump said in the interview.
Trump said that on April 2, reciprocal tariffs would be implemented to equalize any duty rates between the three countries. Under the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade that he negotiated and signed, there are almost no tariffs on products crossing North American borders.
Among the few exceptions are Canada’s high tariffs on dairy products to protect domestic farmers.
“I wanted to help the American carmakers until April 2nd,” Trump said. “April 2nd, it becomes all reciprocal. What they charge us, we charge them. It’s a big deal.”
Trump’s top White House economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, said that the partly suspended 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods are still in place to push the countries to halt flows of fentanyl into the U.S.
He told CNN that if Trump thinks progress on fentanyl “hasn’t been that impressive,” the 25% tariffs will remain in place after April 2, in addition to any increases from Trump’s reciprocal tariff plans. The reprieve for USMCA-compliant autos and other products will also end at that time.
Adjusting tariffs
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told CNBC that under the reciprocal tariff plan, the U.S. will match both tariff rates of other countries and non-tariff barriers.
Navarro said U.S. tariff adjustments would reflect “in the aggregate, the unfairness embedded in the higher tariffs and non-tariff barriers that countries impose on us,” Navarro said.
He added that those tariff adjustments would be made through industry-specific and country-specific investigations.
Asked in the Fox Business interview whether businesses could get clarity about his tariff plan, Trump said: “Well, I think so. But, you know, the terms could go up as time goes by, and they may go up and, you know, I don’t know if it’s predictability.”
There are multiple other Trump tariff actions in play.
Next Wednesday, Trump’s administration will effectively raise tariffs on steel and aluminum by rescinding longstanding exemptions for duties of 25% on steel and raising the rate to 25% for aluminum. This will heap more duties on imports from Canada and Mexico, the biggest foreign suppliers of the metals.
The move also subjects hundreds of downstream products to those tariffs, from steel wire and fabricated structures to bulldozer blades.
Canada’s industry minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne, told CNBC that Ottawa was having difficulty understanding what needed to be done to avoid U.S. tariffs.
“It seems that the goal posts keep moving, and that’s what makes it difficult,” Champagne said. “So I just think that we need to get back to a place of normalcy in our relationship between Canada and the United States.”
He said Canada was willing to engage with Trump on renegotiating the USMCA, as called for in 2026, but that there was a process for this that needed to be followed.
“What we need is stability and predictability on both sides of the border,” Champagne said.
Reporting by David Lawder and Susan Heavey, additional reporting by Andrea Shalal, Editing by Tomasz Janowski, Deepa Babington and Nia Williams
