Trump threatens 100% tariff on Canada if Ottawa seals China trade deal, escalating feud with Prime Minister Mark Carney
U.S. President Donald Trump warned he will impose a 100% tariff on all Canadian goods entering the United States if Canada signs a trade deal with China, an ultimatum that sharply raises the stakes in already fraying U.S.-Canada relations.
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“China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A.”
In a separate message, Trump said, “If Governor Carney thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken.”
The threat follows a visible cooling between Washington and Ottawa. On Thursday, Trump withdrew an invitation for Canada to join his Board of Peace initiative aimed at resolving global conflicts, an about-face that came after Carney’s high-profile speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
During a recent visit to China — the first by a Canadian leader in eight years — Carney called the Asian power a “reliable and predictable partner” and used his Davos remarks to urge European leaders to seek investment from the world’s second-largest economy. In the same speech, he decried the weaponization of economic integration and the use of tariffs as leverage, a critique that earned a standing ovation and was widely interpreted as a rebuke of Trump’s approach, though he did not mention the U.S. president by name.
“Canada doesn’t live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian,” Carney said in a national address Thursday, while also acknowledging the “remarkable partnership between the two nations.”
Carney’s outreach to Beijing marks a reset after years of diplomatic spats between China and Canada, including retaliatory arrests and tit-for-tat trade disputes. Earlier this month, he hailed a “new strategic partnership” in talks with President Xi Jinping. Xi has said bilateral relations reached a turning point after their meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit in October.
The tariff threat lands hard in an economy deeply intertwined with the United States. More than three quarters of Canadian exports are destined for the U.S., and core sectors such as autos, aluminum and steel have already felt pressure from Trump’s global sectoral tariffs. Those impacts have been tempered by Washington’s broad adherence to the existing North American free trade agreement.
That framework is up for renegotiation, with talks to revise the deal set to begin this year. Trump has repeatedly insisted the United States does not need access to any Canadian products — a stance that, if translated into policy, would have sweeping consequences for Canada’s factories, farms and energy producers.
The rhetoric has grown more confrontational. Trump has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada and this week posted a social media image of a map showing Canada — along with Greenland and Venezuela — overlaid with the American flag.
The escalating dispute comes as the United States, Canada and Mexico prepare to co-host the World Cup later this year, a rare joint project that has symbolized North American cooperation even as political and trade tensions rise.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
