The United States and Canada have failed to reach a deal after trade talks fall apart.
According to The Guardian, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney has promised to match US tariffs “dollar for dollar,” after the two sides failed to agree a trade deal by the deadline of midnight on Friday, August 21.
Carney said in a statement that Canadian officials had worked hard in good faith but “last-minute changes in the US proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic and called into question the reliability of any deal.”
US 50% tariffs on Canada also took effect after trade talks fail between the neighbors.
Dollar for dollar
Canadian premier said, “Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses.”
The US tariffs will affect about US$20bn worth of Canadian products after the last-ditch negotiations failed to resolve the latest strain in already tense relations between the historic allies.
US trade representative Jamieson Greer said the breakdown represented a “missed opportunity for Canada.”
He said in the statement shortly before midnight on Friday, “Tonight, Canada declined to finalise the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week.”
“Despite the US offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days,” Greer added.
He also claimed that the US offer was “forward-looking” and included “a historic economic and national security partnership”.
The retaliation escalates the two countries’ trade conflict and calls into question the future of a North American trade pact between the US, Canada and Mexico that is crucial to industry in all three countries.
The political impact of the breakdown will likely be even bigger than the economic fallout. The countries sold each other $880bn worth of goods and services last year.
The tariffs were initially supposed to kick in at 12:01am Wednesday but US President Donald Trump extended the deadline for three days to allow talks to continue.
