Donald Trump signs order to double tariffs on steel and aluminum starting Wednesday

It’s the latest salvo in a war Canadian metals producers say Ottawa is losing.

Canadian steelmakers blasted the Liberal government for a little-noticed move during the federal election campaign that saw Ottawa give a six-month reprieve on Canadian counter-tariffs on a wide range of U.S. steel imports to this country, giving American producers an advantage. 

When Trump levied 25 per cent surcharges on Canadian and other global steel and aluminum imports on March 12, Canada retaliated the next day with 25 per cent counter-tariffs on U.S. goods worth $29.8 billion, including $12.6 billion worth of American steel and $3 billion worth of U.S.-made aluminum products. 

But during the federal campaign, when the government was in caretaker mode, Catherine Cobden, head of the Canadian Steel Producers Association, said Ottawa gave what amounts to a “six-month free pass” to most U.S. steel products “much to our utter dismay” while Canadian steel shipments continued to face Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs in the U.S.

“Nobody consulted. Nobody was prepared to talk to us after it happened. And so we think it was very ill-informed decision,” Cobden said.

Canadian companies make many of the same steel products that the U.S. now ships tariff-free into Canada and would have been able to pick up business in the domestic market if counter-tariffs had remained in place with no reprieve, said Cobden. She said Canadian producers understood why Ottawa would provide “remissions” to Canadian importers to offset the cost of counter-tariffs where there are no substitutes for American made products, such as for certain medical steels.

But at a time when the U.S. was continuing to punish Canadian steelmakers, Cobden said Ottawa’s change of heart on retaliating against Trump’s tariffs was seen as profoundly unfair.

“What isn’t fair is that the same (Canadian steel) products are getting tariffed in the United States, so we’re not working on level playing field across the integrated marketplace,” she said. “The issue is: if we produce it here and we’re in the middle of a trade war with the United States, why are we giving them a free pass?”

She said Trump’s 25 per cent tariff “has already had a devastating effect,” saying Canadian producers have “lost close to 700 jobs. We’ve seen our shipments to the United States drop by about 30 per cent already, and we’ve seen, of course, prices rise in the United States by 25 per cent or so.”

“The doubling down of the tariff to 50 per cent, what that will effectively mean is that the U.S. market is no longer open to Canadian steel,” Cobden said.

That makes it all the more urgent for Canada to swiftly close its own borders to anticipated dumping of cheap Chinese steel (which already faces a 100 per cent Canadian tariff) via other countries like Turkey, South Korea and Vietnam into the Canadian market, now that they too will find their steel shipments steeply tariffed in the U.S. market.

Top executives from Canadian steel companies are coming to Ottawa Thursday to press their case that the Carney government needs to act immediately to reinstate counter-tariffs and slap new defensive tariffs on other foreign steel products.

The Conservatives are arguing Canada is no longer “elbows up” against Trump, but is now “elbows down” as it tries to negotiate a new economic and security deal with the Trump administration.

Dominic LeBlanc, the federal minister charged with the Canada-U.S. file, met in Washington Tuesday with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, part of an intense wave of cross-border talks to reach an agreement to drop tariffs. His office has repeatedly declined the Star’s requests for an interview, and again Tuesday said he was unavailable to answer questions.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne earlier Tuesday downplayed the latest tariff threat as he headed into a cabinet meeting. He said Trump had not put it in writing via an executive order and claimed the federal government is “in sync” with steel and aluminum producers “and with the unions. We’re really working hand in hand.”

“We’ve been clear from the get-go that we would fight these tariffs. We would protect our workers and industry and build a country … using Canadian steel is the key. We need to use more Canadian steel. We need to have measures in place to favour that, and that’s exactly the discussion I’m having with the industry.”

But steel producers warn they cannot wait for Buy Canadian steel policies as part of a plan to build big infrastructure projects.

“We’re not against that,” said Cobden. “We welcome it in fact. But the reality is if we don’t move fast to protect the domestic industry, we won’t be around in sufficient amount to deal with those projects and to supply to those projects.”

As part of Canada’s effort to persuade Trump to drop tariffs, Carney’s federal ministers of public safety and justice introduced a bill Tuesday to address the president’s so-called border concerns around illegal migrants and fentanyl smuggling that was immediately seen by civil liberty advocates as going too far. It would expand the investigative powers of the RCMP and immigration authorities to collect and share information with American agencies.

Gary Anandasangaree, the public safety minister in charge of border security, said the bill’s new powers are aimed at helping “secure” the long-term relationship with the U.S. but insisted it is “not exclusively about the United States.”

Meanwhile, Carney insisted in the House of Commons his government is responding to Trump’s threats with a plan, as Conservatives slammed him for not bringing in a spring budget, and not facing the “facts.”

The prime minister retorted, “The government of Canada is imposing tariffs that cause maximum impact on the United States, minimum impact on Canada, fact, on over $60 billion of U.S. exports to Canada, (and) raised over $1.7 billion already. Fact, fact, fact.” 

Carney hailed what he said was an agreement with premiers to build “one Canadian economy” to confront the challenges of the trade war.