Premier Doug Ford was in a familiar spot on Wednesday morning — on CNN, exasperated with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Ford, who now routinely appears on U.S. network news to voice his grievances with Trump, said he was “dumbfounded” by the president’s latest move to slap an additional 25 per cent tariff on imports of steel and aluminum to the United States.
The premier called the move a “tax” on American products, and said it would hurt the American consumers and workers in the long run.
“We know that costs of any product with steel in them in the U.S. has gone up 16 per cent. We ship in approximately $30 billion of steel from the United States. We are going to onshore as much as we can, we have great steel manufacturing in Ontario and across the country.
“We’re going to onshore it and start producing it ourselves,” he vowed.
Trump signed the executive order Tuesday to increase the levies to a total of 50 per cent, saying it was a necessary step to protect national security and industries in the United States.
When CNN noted that some U.S. steel manufacturers were happy with the increase, Ford said they were being “short-sighted.”
“Well it might sound good but they can’t see the forest beyond the trees,” he said. “And when we start onshoring $30 billion, (impacting) tens of thousands of jobs in the steel sector in the U.S., they are going to wake up quickly.
“I’ve asked for a list of every steel product that we ship in and then we are going to start producing them here ourselves,” he maintained.
Despite his insistence on, Ford said harming the U.S. is not what he ultimately wants.
“What I recommend, why don’t we have a goal together and say we’re going to produce more steel with America and Canada and we’re gonna create 250,000 new steel jobs. That’s what we need to do, rather than penalize Canada.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney, meanwhile, has called the new tariffs “unlawful and unjustified” and said Canada will be considering its next move.
“We will take some time — not much, some time — because we are in intensive discussions right now with the Americans on our trading relationship,” Carney said.
“Those discussions are progressing … So we’ll take some time, but not more.”
Ford said he’s had enough time to think.
“I highly recommended to the Prime Minister directly that we slap another 25 per cent on top of our tariffs to equal President Trump’s tariffs on our steel,” he told CNN.
When it comes to repairing the frayed relationship between the two nations, Ford said it’s an uphill battle due to Trump’s mercurial nature.
“It just seems with President Trump it’s five steps forward and 10 steps backwards and that doesn’t help the situation.”
“It’s unfortunate that he’s taking this route against Canada.”
With files from The Canadian Press
