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Canada has ‘nearly zero’ tariffs on US goods? Not true, finance minister says
Francois-Philippe Champagne said 70 per cent of March’s counter-tariffs were still being enforced, despite pause on certain categories
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Canada’s finance minister said the government kept 25 per cent retaliatory tariffs on tens of billions of dollars in US goods, disputing a report from a research firm that suggested it had paused the vast majority of those levies.
Francois-Philippe Champagne said 70 per cent of the counter-tariffs implemented by Canada in March were still in place, according to a social media post on Saturday.
The government “temporarily and publicly paused tariffs” on some items for health and public safety reasons, he said.
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That 70 per cent figure implies that Canada continues to charge tariffs on about C$42 billion (US$30 billion) of US exports to Canada, excluding cars.
Champagne’s post is pushing back on a May 13 report from Oxford Economics.
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The note from economists Tony Stillo and Michael Davenport said recent government exemptions to tariffs covered so many categories of products that the result was a “nearly zero” increase in Canada’s tariff rate against the US.
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