Ontario Premier Doug Ford wants to make sure that Canada is “first in the line for exemptions” from new U.S. global tariffs that he says will take effect worldwide on Apr. 2.
According to Ford, U.S. trade representatives told him behind closed doors during his visit to Washington, D.C. that a “global tariff” is in the works.
“I can tell you what they want. They are going to put a global tariff on the whole world,” Ford told reporters at Queen’s Park Tuesday. “What we are working at is making sure we are first in line for exemptions and we told the administration very clearly how we feel these tariffs are going to hurt the American people.”
Ford met with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick last week after agreeing to pause the 25 per cent surcharge on Ontario electricity supplied to three U.S. states. He credited this threat as the reason Lutnick agreed to sit down with him, saying that if he hadn’t, the “meeting would have never happened.”
“We would have been going back and forth, tit for tat,” said Ford, claiming that after the meeting “we left there knowing what the U.S. wants.”
The Trump administration has yet to specify which Canadian goods will be hit with 25 per cent tariffs as of April 2 but Ford said he believes that they will be imposed not just on Canada and Mexico but globally.
Ford added that he remains optimistic Canada may be able to carve out an exemption for itself by way of continued diplomacy.
“We look forward to working through this and we want to be in the tier one level, per se, of countries that they turn to when they realize they can’t produce the aluminum they need or they can’t produce the high-grade nickel and other critical minerals and autos and so on and so forth,” said Ford.
However, the premier’s threat to levy a surcharge on electricity exports met the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump last week, who said he “shouldn’t be playing with electricity.”
In an interview, Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum saying it was meant to “break some guy in Ontario who said he was going to tax American energy 25 per cent.”
This sentiment was later echoed by Lutnick, who according to Ford, made a point to de-escalate tensions by saying that Trump would not be “invading Canada and all this other nonsense” regarding the U.S. president’s rhetoric about Canada becoming “the 51st state.”
“I think he has totally toned it down. I haven’t seen him do an interview since we had our meeting and I have kind of held back as well,” said Ford on Tuesday.
“I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize our talks and negotiations. I want to make sure when we get through this we are on the tier one level of being a supplier and a good supplier to the U.S.”
Ford said that both parties are committed to keeping the communication lines open but that retaliatory tariffs remain a possibility following the outcome of April 2.
“We will retaliate dollar for dollar and tariff for tariff. It is going to hurt the Americans, it is going to hurt us, but we can’t roll over. We have to make sure we stay strong and we stay united as a country and we have to continue on fighting,” he said.