Ontario Premier Doug Ford blasted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for categorizing Canada as the sole benefactor in its relationship with the United States.
In recent weeks, Trump unveiled 10% tariffs against Canada that will take effect on July 9 and a 25% tariff on foreign automobiles. In a Monday interview on Fox News, Lutnick said Canada is “feeding off us.”
“He’s totally wrong. I mentioned this to Secretary Lutnick. I guess he doesn’t want our potash that keeps your farming community going. You don’t need our uranium for your nuclear power. You don’t need our energy, be it oil, that we shipped $1.2 billion a year down there,” Ford said Tuesday on Fox News’s America Reports. “You don’t need Ontario’s high-grade nickel that supports you and your military, your aerospace, and your manufacturing, not to mention we have more critical minerals than any place in the entire world right here in Ontario.”
The U.S. has a trade deficit with Canada of over $60 billion. The majority of Canada’s exports that run the U.S. into the red are oil. However, the U.S. has a trade surplus with its northern ally without considering those exports.
“He forgot to mention that there are 9 million Americans who wake up every morning to produce a product or a widget for Ontario alone. He didn’t mention we are the No. 1 customer to the U.S. in the entire world,” Ford said.
LUTNICK SAYS TRUMP TARIFFS ON SMALL ISLANDS ARE STRATEGIC CLOSING OF TRADE ‘LOOPHOLES’
Alberta is Canada’s largest crude oil producer and the largest crude oil exporter to the U.S. In 2023, the last year for which data was available, Alberta sourced 87.4% of the total volume exported to the U.S.
Tariffs against Canadian goods came amid a yearslong border crisis, which increased the number of immigrants illegally crossing the Canadian border and led to an increase in Chinese-produced fentanyl entering the U.S. Lutnick predicted that as long as fentanyl was no longer a problem for the U.S., the tariffs would go away.