US imposes 50% tariffs on $20bn worth of Canadian goods after talks fail

The United States has imposed 50 percent tariffs on about $20bn worth of Canadian goods after trade negotiators from the two countries failed to finalise a trade deal despite three days of talks in Washington, DC.

With a deadline imposed by US President Donald Trump expiring at 12:01am Eastern Time (04:01 GMT) on Saturday, US and Canadian officials made clear that an agreement had not been reached.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his country would match the new tariffs “dollar for dollar”.

“In recent weeks, we made important progress toward improving Canada’s position as having the best deal in the world with the US,” said Carney in a statement. “However, that progress has not been enough to meet our objectives for Canadians.”

Carney quickly outlined what his government would do to protect Canadians from the impact of the trade war, saying that it would introduce in the coming days new measures to support workers and businesses.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer pinned the blame on Canada, saying that it was “a missed opportunity for Canada to partner with the United States”.

“Canada declined to finalise the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week,” Greer said. “Despite the US offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walkbacks of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days.”

The tariffs will hit about 5 percent of Canadian exports to the US, including electronics, industrial machinery and dairy products, adding to pre-existing US tariffs on steel, lumber and autos.

Trump imposed tariffs on key imports from Canada early in his second term last year, prompting Ottawa to retaliate with a suite of countermeasures.

The two countries have gone back and forth ever since, with Trump periodically introducing new tariff threats.

The Trump administration had announced the tariffs in July after the US president accused Canada of “discriminatory treatment of American products”.

But Trump told reporters on Friday that he expected a deal with Canada could be reached – something that ultimately did not prove to be correct, for now.

The tariffs could hurt many Canadian businesses exporting affected goods to the US.

“Tariffs of 50 percent would effectively price hundreds of Canadian goods out of the US market,” Julian Karaguesian, a lecturer and trade expert at McGill University in Montreal, told Al Jazeera earlier this week.