Follow along Friday for live tariff updates and analysis from across the Star newsroom.
Mark Carney announced retaliatory auto tariffs on American vehicles Thursday after the Trump administration imposed levies on non-U.S. cars and auto parts. China also retaliated by announcing a 34% tariff on imports of all U.S. products
5:10 p.m.
On the sidelines of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said that in speaking to the Europeans, her message has been that “we know that the relationship will never be same again.”
The Americans, she said, “want to do things differently, and we understand that, and that’s why we will seek to make sure that we get to an agreement on trade but also in security, because both cannot be siloed.”
“We understand that President Trump is taking decisions for his own administration and his own people. He also respects strength,” she said.
Canada has put counter-tariffs on American products that Joly said puts “maximum pressure on the Trump administration, and at the same time, we are finding off ramps.”
But she said “the only people on Earth, that will be able to really have President Trump change course, are the Americans.”
4 p.m. | U.S. and Canadian markets close after free falling for second straight day
Global markets continued their downward spiral Friday afternoon as China retaliated against U.S. President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with tariffs of their own.
The Canadian and U.S. stock markets closed after a second day of free falling. On Thursday, the S&P 500 in New York recorded its worst one-day decline since 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite short-lived rallies in the morning and afternoon, the S&P-TSX Composite — Canada’s main stock index — closed Friday down 4.6 per cent, while the S&P 500 had lost nearly six per cent. The Dow Jones index saw one of its worst single-day losses, dropping 5.5 per cent, and the NASDAQ closed off 5.8 per cent.
Read more from the Star’s Nathan Bawaan and Josh Rubin
3:50 p.m. | The distance between Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney is shrinking when it comes to Donald Trump’s tariffs
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he supports keeping one of the biggest trade irritants identified by President Donald Trump, specifically the Liberal government’s three per cent digital services tax on tech giants like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft.
Speaking on a French language election show hosted by three Radio-Canada journalists, Poilievre said the imposition of the tax on global digital giants is “fair.”
In a week when the Trump tariffs prompted a global stock market plunge and dominated Canada’s federal election campaign, Poilievre has noticeably toughened his language on Trump — all while insisting he is not shifting his campaign focus, repeatedly attacking Liberal Leader Mark Carney for being a key player in a “lost Liberal decade” that left Canada too “weak” to face Trump.
Appearing on “Cinq Chefs” after a Thursday evening rally in Oshawa, Poilievre nevertheless agreed with Carney on the overall approach to Trump’s latest move. He backs immediate retaliatory counter-tariffs, and calls for a renegotiation of a new trade deal with Trump, not waiting until next year when the Canada-United States-Mexico trade agreement is formally up for review — as does Carney.
Read more from the Star’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Tonda MacCharles
3:30 p.m. | Most Conservative voters are supporting Poilievre due to anti-Liberal sentiment, not his ability to stand up to Trump: Poll
A new poll suggests Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre‘s ability to stand up to Trump is motivating the vote of only a small number of people who said they’re voting for his party.
Conservative voters appear to be more motivated by anti-Liberal sentiment and a desire for change.
Meanwhile, more than one in five people planning to vote for the Liberals are being motivated by their belief that leader Mark Carney is the best option to deal with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Read the full report from the Canadian Press.
3:20 p.m. | Ontario’s Premier Ford says Canada must fight back against Trump’s tariffs
Premier Doug Ford says when it comes to tariffs imposed by the U.S., Canada must fight back.
“We’re strong, we’re resilient, but we have two choices here, folks,” Ford said from Orillia Friday afternoon, where he was touring areas hard-hit by the recent ice storm that has left many residents still without power.
“We will either roll over and let this guy run us over with a cement truck 15 times because they don’t care about us, or we get up and fight like we’ve never fought before,” Ford told reporters. “I believe in the latter. We need to fight, continue fighting, and make sure that Americans feel the pain — and I hate saying that, it’s not the American people, it’s one person, that’s President Trump.”
The U.S. economy has already taken a huge hit following Trump’s “liberation day” global tariff announcement, which he likened more to “termination day.”
“We see the market tumbling by trillions of dollars – unprecedented,” Ford said. “Consumer confidence is down all throughout the United States. Investment has stalled, and Americans are going to lose their jobs.”
—Kristin Rushowy
3:00 p.m. | U.S. Congress has the power to halt Trump’s tariffs. But Republicans aren’t ready to use it
As stock markets tumble, Republicans in Congress were watching with unease and talking of clawing back their power to levy tariffs — but almost none seemed ready to turn their words into action.
The Republican president is upending longstanding GOP principles like support for free trade, yet despite clear misgivings and a constitutional mandate to decide tariffs, most lawmakers were not ready to cross Trump. Instead, they were focusing all their attention on advancing the president’s “big, beautiful bill” of tax breaks and spending cuts, even as tariffs — in essence, import taxes — threatened to raise consumer prices across the board and push the global economy into a recession.
Read more from the Associated Press.
2:40 p.m. | Talks with Americans helped Canada avoid extra Trump tariffs: Saskatchewan premier
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says he remains concerned with U.S. tariffs on Canadian products but thinks talking with American officials helped Canada avoid a worse outcome.
Moe says U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision not to impose sweeping tariffs on Canada puts the country in a better position than others nations.
He and other Canadian leaders have been travelling to Washington, D.C., in recent months to make the case that levies on Canada harms Americans.
Read more from the Canadian Press.
12:40 p.m. | Trump tariffs have thrown world markets into chaos. Here’s what investors should do
With all the chaotic tariff moves by U.S. President Donald Trump these days, it’s natural to worry about your investments.
Trump introduced a broad new round of sweeping global tariffs on Wednesday, causing dramatic declines in world stock markets Thursday and early trading Friday morning.
Economists expect these tariffs will drag on the world economy and possibly knock it into recession, which could seriously hurt stock prices in Canada, the U.S. and around the world.
But when the question turns to what you should do to your portfolio now to protect yourself from this threat, the best answer for long-term investors is, as always, not much.
Read more from contributing columnist David Aston
12:23 p.m. | With his global tariffs, Donald Trump has done the unthinkable — and it’s not what you think
On April 3, Howard Lutnick, the United States Secretary of Commerce, appeared on television to explain that everything’s going to be fine.
Sure, the stock market had tumbled in response to America’s war on global trade. Sure, consumer prices might spike. And mass layoffs? They could happen, too. But give it time, Lutnick said: six months from now, the U.S. economy would come roaring back. Just you wait.
In a week full of hard-to-fathom moments, a week in which U.S. President Donald Trump calculated tariff rates using a random, nonsensical formula and slapped levies on Antarctic islands and overseas military bases (American overseas military bases), the most surreal part of it all might be this: Trump is playing the long game. Or, at least, he’s trying to.
The most instant-gratification-minded politician who’s ever lived, the one who’s forged his entire political career on promises to make everything better instantly and painlessly, has decided to hitch his second-term wagon to a grand restructuring of international trade that will take years to fully implement and that will hammer the average American voter in the meantime.
Read more from Star contributor Scott Stinson
11:30 a.m. | A Canadian recession is now inevitable — and we’re not ready. How will the parties deal with a Trumpcession?
A Canadian recession is now inevitable. The only questions are how long it will last and how deep it will cut. The only certainty is more economic uncertainty.
The self-inflicted Trumpcession is a warning. Our intertwined economies mean where they go, we usually follow. Until January, solid economic growth and falling inflation meant low unemployment and rising stock markets. By March, the American economy was shrinking by 2.8 per cent, the fastest rate since the pandemic.
That was before U.S. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday’s tariffs, a mangled mix of new “rules” that seem to mostly exclude Canada and Mexico. We’re still subject to a 25 per cent tariff on aluminum and steel, but not the new 10 per cent minimum tariff on foreign goods sold in the U.S. or the 25 per cent auto tariff for goods compliant with the free-trade deal Trump himself negotiated in his first term, the USMCA. But who knows? The meaning of compliance or the rules could change tomorrow.
Policy whiplash, a trademark of the Trump administration, has eroded U.S. and Canadian business confidence, growth and wealth. Before Wednesday’s announcement, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ stock exchanges saw a combined $5 trillion (U.S.) go poof since January. By Thursday morning, $7.5 trillion had vanished.
Read more from Star contributing columnist Armine Yalnizyan
10:50 a.m. | Stock markets continue nosedive as China retaliates against Trump’s latest tariffs
Global markets continued their downward spiral Friday as China retaliated against U.S. President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with tariffs of there own.
Canadian and U.S. stock markets opened Friday morning in a nosedive. By 10:30 a.m., the S&P-TSX Composite Index was down more than 3.8 per cent, while the S&P 500 in New York was close behind down 3.7 per cent.
The continued fall comes one day after the S&P 500 saw its worst day of losses since 2020 during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read more from the Star’s Nathan Bawaan
10:40 a.m. | Singh slams Carney over Brookfield practices
Also in Montreal, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh takes a shot at Mark Carney, repeating his charge that amid Canadians’ worries about the trade war and the effects of Trump’s tariffs on their jobs and cost of living, companies like Brookfield are using loopholes and tax havens to avoid paying their fair share and contribute to Canadian services.
Singh says that by the NDP’s calculations, which the Star has not verified, Brookfield, Carney’s former employer, has avoided $5.3 billion in Canadian taxes since 2021.
The NDP is proposing ending tax agreements with havens like Bermuda, requiring corporations to prove why they need offshore accounts, implementing public country-by-country financial reporting to prevent corporations from “hiding” profits and launching a review of the tax code to close loopholes they say allow big corporations to avoid paying what they owe.
“It is unjustifiable for a company as massive as Brookfield Investments to make that much money and to not want to contribute back into the society that allows them to make their money in the first place,” Singh said.
Carney has denied Brookfield Asset Management’s tax arrangement were meant to avoid paying taxes in Canada. He has said entities that invest in the fund, like the pension plan for Ontario teachers, end up paying taxes in their home country when money returns to them as income.
Read More: What we know about Mark Carney’s Brookfield connections
10:09 a.m. | CBC ‘more important than ever’
Reacting to Mark Carney’s plan to protect the CBC, a pro-public broadcaster group called Friends of Canadian media had this to say, from their Friends of Canadian Med executive director, Marla Boltman:
“By now it should be clear to all Canadians that President Trump’s unprovoked attacks have put our democracy and our sovereignty at risk. That makes CBC/Radio Canada’s role in gathering us as a national community more important than ever. Today’s announcement sends a strong message to Canadians that a properly funded and sustainable national public broadcaster is now a key ballot issue. We expect to see similar commitments from the other political parties as the election progresses.”
10:07 a.m. | The ‘best of a series of bad deals’
Commenting on this week’s American tariffs against most of the world, Mark Carney says “Canada got the best of a series of bad deals,” in the sense that no unannounced tariffs hit this country. But he says there are still “unjustified” tariffs that Trump has imposed, including over his alleged border emergency, on steel and aluminum, and on Canadian autos. “I don’t think this is time for celebration. It’s time to fight those tariffs,” he says.
9:57 a.m. | Carney accuses Poilievre of following Trump’s lead
In Montreal, Liberal Leader Mark Carney is extolling the virtues of Canadian and Quebec culture, which he says has come under Trump’s eye as he questions Canada’s sovereignty.
His announcement today focuses on preserving CBC and Radio-Canada, which he is contrasting against Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s promise to “defund” the CBC while preserving French-language Radio-Canada. Carney says this is impossible, and accused Poilievre of following “Trump’s lead” by taking aim at institutions like the CBC. A new Liberal government would increase funding to CBC, boost local journalism it provides and make its funding statutory – so Parliament as a whole would need to vote to change it, instead of just happening through a cabinet decision.
—Alex Ballingall
Trump defends tariff moves on social media
Although experts have harshly criticized the president’s economic policies, he’s finding support on TikTok.
He shared a video on Friday morning that said “Trump is crashing the stock market” and “he’s doing it on purpose” as part of “secret game he’s playing, and it could make you rich.”
Wall Street appears on track for another day of crushing losses
Major U.S. indexes plunged sharply before Friday’s opening bell, then doubled their losses after China matched Trump’s tariffs.
Futures for the S&P 500 fell 3.6% before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 3.4%, falling below the 40,000 mark. Nasdaq futures tumbled 4%. That follows Thursday’s wipeout, Wall Street’s worst day in five years.
Canadian economy lost 33,000 jobs in March, biggest loss since 2022
Statistics Canada says the economy lost 33,000 jobs in March, the biggest loss since January 2022, while the unemployment rate ticked higher.
The agency says the unemployment rate for March rose to 6.7 per cent compared with 6.6 per cent in February.
Read the full story from the Canadian Press
New and used car prices set to rise due to Trump tariffs
Experts say U.S. tariffs on Canadian auto imports will drive prices higher for both new and used cars.
Sean Mactavish, CEO of used-car marketplace Autozen, says prices are already rising on some used cars as sellers anticipate buyers looking for a better deal compared to a new vehicle.
Read the full story from the Canadian Press
China retaliates as Trump’s tariffs affect world markets
World shares slid further and U.S. futures also fell Friday as investors counted the potential costs of U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest set of tariffs, even as China retaliated by announcing a 34% tariff on imports of all U.S. products and other retaliatory moves.
The new Chinese tariff matched the rate of the U.S. “reciprocal” tariff imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump this week. The Dow Jones on Friday fell 1,200 points, almost 3%. The growth and tech focused Nasdaq fell harder.
Trump announced a minimum tariff of 10% on global imports, with the tax rate running much higher on products from certain countries like China and those from the European Union. Smaller, poorer countries in Asia were slapped with tariffs as high as 49%.
Read the full story from the Associated Press
Mark Carney hits back at Donald Trump’s tariffs, targetting $35B worth of U.S. vehicles
Canada struck back against the United States with a retaliatory counter-tariff punch on $35 billion worth of American vehicles shipped for sale into Canada as the fallout of President Donald Trump’s sweeping new trade measures walloped stock markets and rattled relations around the world.
The day after Trump flipped the table on the global trading order and hit more than 180 countries and territories — big and small, allies and rivals alike — with punishing tariffs of 10 to 50 per cent, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the Trump tariffs “will rupture the global economy and adversely affect global economic growth” likely causing a recession in the U.S. which could bleed into Canada.
Carney walked a fine line between striking back against Trump’s newly-imposed auto tariffs on Canada with matching retaliatory duties on American vehicles imported into Canada, and angling for a more advantageous re-set of the Canada-U.S. relationship while he courts allies elsewhere.
Canada’s duties will hike costs on Canadian importers and consumers, and raise about $8 billion in revenue which Carney said would be poured back into supports for the thousands of workers hit by what he called Trump’s “unjustified, unwarranted and…misguided” tariffs.
Read the full story from Tonda MacCharles, Alex Ballingall and Josh Rubin
About 6,000 autoworkers receive layoff notices as Stellantis announces two-week shutdown of Windsor plant
Donald Trump’s trade war just landed a body blow in Windsor, and industry insiders warn that it’s just the start of what could turn into a shutdown of the entire North American auto sector.
Auto manufacturer Stellantis informed its local union late Wednesday that it would be shutting down its Windsor assembly plant for two weeks starting April 7 putting up to 4,500 people out of work, and that “more changes to the schedule (are) expected in coming weeks.”
Union officials said Thursday that a total of 6,000 members have gotten layoff notices so far, including at the assembly plant, and at parts manufacturers which supply it.
Meanwhile, GM’s plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana has increased production of a light truck also produced at its assembly plant in Oshawa.
Check out the full story from Josh Rubin
Windsor autoworkers facing layoffs call Trump’s tariffs ‘an unjustified attack on Canada and our jobs’
The roughly 4,000 workers who will be laid off at Stellantis’ Windsor assembly plant became some of the first casualties of President Donald Trump’s trade war, but they are unlikely to be the last in this southern Ontario city.
While Trump sparred Canada from the worst of the global tariffs he announced Wednesday, the country’s auto industry was hit with a 25 per cent tariff, and a complicated set of rules to determine how it will be applied. Stellantis said Thursday it will shut the plant for two weeks — starting April 7 — to determine the impact.
“Stellantis continues to assess the effects of the recently announced U.S. tariffs on imported vehicles and will continue to engage with the U.S. administration on these policy changes,” said company spokesperson LouAnn Gosselin. “Immediate actions we must take include temporarily pausing production at some of our Canadian and Mexican assembly plants.”
Read more from Ryan Tumilty
Trump tariffs prompt market sell-off: S&P 500 suffers largest one-day loss since 2020
U.S. President Donald Trump’s expanded global trade war sent shock waves through markets Thursday with the S&P 500 suffering its largest one-day loss in value since the pandemic hit in 2020.
“A day like today is dominated by emotions,” said Bipan Rai, managing director of BMO Global Asset Management. “We got an historical announcement yesterday and the shock is still reverberating through the market.”
Markets in Asia and Europe were the first to open following Trump’s announcement Wednesday of reciprocal tariffs targeting U.S. allies and foes alike.
London’s FTSE 100 Index was down by 1.6 per cent as the U.K. faces 10 per cent tariffs from the U.S. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 plunged nearly three per cent after Trump slapped the island nation with 24 per cent duties,
Similar scenes played out in Canadian and U.S. markets by the time they opened.
Read the full story from Josh Rubin and Nathan Bawaan
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