(Bloomberg) -ontario Premier Doug Ford renewed the call to buy “Canadian everything” to accumulate pressure on the US to negotiate a business agreement and raise tariffs.
Ford, leading the largest Canadian province and organizes prime ministers this week, said the country should lean into its position as the largest American customer. Prime Minister Mark Carney will appear at the conference on Tuesday with provincial leaders.
This week, Dominic Leblanc, Minister responsible for trade in Canada-USA, is negotiating to negotiate with the US President Donald Trump, threatening 35% of the tariff on some Canadian goods, unless there is an agreement on Trump 1 August. However, the President and his officials sent mixed signals on whether they wanted to sign agreements or simply continue with unilateral tariff rates on business partners.
“We encourage all provinces and territories: Start buying Canadian vehicles, start buying everything Canadian-it will hurt more than anything else,” Ford told reporters on Monday when he arrived at Deerhurst Resort near Huntsville, a picturesque city of Ontario in Muskok.
Canadians say that according to a quarterly survey of Canada released on Monday, they are based on a boycott of travel and products in response to tariffs. About 55% of respondents said they would spend less on holiday in US destinations and about 63% said they were going back to shopping for US goods.
“We are their number one customer. We buy more products from the US than in Japan, China, Korea, the UK and France.
Trump raised tariffs to import foreign steel and aluminum to 50% in June. The Canadian steel industry has already reduced jobs and saw the shipments decreased. Last week, Carney’s government announced a plan to limit the import of foreign steel to help domestic manufacturers – although one influential Executive Director said it wasn’t far enough.
The Ford’s government undertook $ 1.3 billion ($ 950 million) in May to help manufacturers strengthen tax credit for products produced in Ontario. The government says that about 830,000 people in the province are working in production, which is about 10% of jobs.
The Canadian premiere largely affected the unified front in the face of the Trump Trade War, and their summer retreats will be controlled by discussing how to increase the trade between provinces and strengthen the main infrastructure projects such as ports to strengthen the country’s economic independence.
It seems that Carney and some provincial leaders have resigned to at least a certain level of tariffs in the Canadian consignment to the US, despite the current trade agreement, which Trump signed in his first term, which to largely allows immediate trade between the US, Mexico and Canada. The Prime Minister said there was little evidence last week that Trump would reduce an agreement that would completely abandon tariffs.
Prime Minister Alberta Danielle Smith, who came to the resort on Monday, said she hoped that the tariffs specific to sectors would be minimized as much as possible, while Quebec’s Francois Legault said it was too early to see if some tariffs remain.
“We’ll see what we can get on 1 August. Of course there would be no tariffs with the ideal situation,” Legault told reporters. Whatever the agreement is, he said, “We must be sure that we will leave this agreement for three or five years. We must have an economy where companies know what is happening in six months and 12 months.”
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(Tagstotranslate) Ontario Premier
