Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne insists that the federal government has retained the bulk of its retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. despite an order by Prime Minister Mark Carney to exempt a large swath of impacted products.
While the tariffs are still technically in place, Oxford Economics revealed that the carve-outs announced by Prime Minister Mark Carney effectively nullified most of the levies Canada had imposed on trade with America.
Canada hit the U.S. with several retaliatory tariffs in March, implementing 25 per cent across-the-board tariffs with a further round of tariffs levied in April.
The first suite of tariffs involved new import taxes of 25 per cent on about $60 billion in U.S. goods before adding additional levies against American vehicles in early April.
Despite previously pledging to support “maximum impact” trade measures, Carney decided with his cabinet to exempt certain goods while still on the campaign trail. Carney’s exemptions cancel out nearly all of the retaliatory tariffs that both he and former prime minister Justin Trudeau had introduced in response to the Trump administration.
Champagne said that 70 per cent of the counter-tariffs implemented in March currently remain in place after Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre shared Oxford’s findings.
“More of the same falsehoods. To retaliate against U.S. tariffs, Canada launched the largest-ever response — including $60B of tariffs on end-use goods. 70% of those tariffs are still in place,” Champagne posted to X on Saturday. “We temporarily and publicly paused tariffs on goods for health & public safety reasons.”
The tariff exemptions mark a stark contrast from Carney’s heavily pushed ‘elbows up’ message while on the federal election campaign trail, which was well received by many Canadians.
Champagne quietly implemented a six-month tariff exemption during the middle of the campaign on April 15, with the Government of Canada only officially publishing the announcement on May 7, more than a week after the federal election concluded.
The exemptions included products used in Canadian manufacturing, processing and food and beverage packaging.
Automakers such as General Motors Co. were also permitted to import select vehicles into Canada without being tariffed.
There was an additional carve-out for items related to health care, public safety and national security.
“The United States Surtax Remission Order (2025) [the Order] provides time-limited relief from surtaxes on U.S. goods when those goods are imported by or on behalf of listed Canadian public or private entities in the public health, health care, public safety, and national security sectors,” wrote the Government of Canada in a statement May 7.
“Remission of the surtaxes is granted for goods imported into Canada before October 16, 2025.”
Oxford Economics also said that while such tariff exemptions may alleviate some inflation, Canada could still see a recession before the end of the year.
Following the report’s publication, Poilievre took to social media to say that Carney “owed” Canadians some immediate answers.
“‘Elbows up,’ Mark Carney told everyone. Yet in the middle of the 37 day election campaign, he quietly dropped retaliatory tariffs to ‘nearly zero’ without telling anyone, knowing it would only become public after the election was over (May 7),” wrote Poilievre on Friday.