U.S. President Donald Trump has confirmed that he will impose 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada starting on Feb. 1, though he said the action might not include crude oil.
Speaking to reporters in the White House, Trump said his administration was yet to determine whether oil imports would be included in the tariffs.
“Oil is going to have nothing to do with it as far as I’m concerned,” said Trump. “We’re going to make that determination probably tonight on oil. Because they send us oil, we’ll see – it depends on what their price is.”
Trump added that, “we’ll really have to do that because we have very big deficits with those countries.”
Representatives from both the Mexican and Canadian governments have said they plan to respond to U.S. tariffs with their own tit-for-tat measures.
Canada’s Minister of International Trade Mary Ng said “everything is on the table” when it comes to responding to U.S. tariffs, refusing to rule out export taxes on energy exports.
“If you’re going to put tariffs on Canada, what it actually will do is make things more expensive for Americans,” said Ng.
The Bank of Canada has warned that persistent U.S. tariffs could push the Canadian economy into a recession and further devalue the Canadian dollar.
The U.S. remains Canada’s largest trading partner and 77% of all exports from Canada head south to America, according to trade data.
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