Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney calls new U.S. tariffs 'a miscalculation' after trade talks collapse

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Saturday morning called steep new U.S. tariffs on a wide swath of his country's goods “a miscalculation” after trade talks with Canada collapsed late Friday night.

The 50% duties went into effect at the stroke of midnight. Carney blamed the breakdown of talks on what he said were the Trump administration’s “uneconomic” and “unfair” demands.

“In recent days, the United States proposed new terms that were uneconomic, unfair, and undermined the net benefits for Canada, and called into question the reliability of any deal. In short, they asked too much, and they offered too little,” Carney told reporters in a press conference.

The tariffs affect about $20 billion worth of U.S. imports from Canada, according to the U.S. trade representative’s office. The import taxes will hit everything from hockey sticks to some building materials, liquors and certain kinds of clothing.

Carney says Canada will immediately retaliate against the U.S. “Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses,” he said in Friday’s statement.

On Saturday, the prime minister said Canada was pursuing a “focused response,” with tariffs on the U.S. “concentrated in sectors such as steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, electronics.”

Greer said in a statement early Saturday that Canada “declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week.”

“Despite the U.S. 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,” he said.

“We don’t have new talks planned with the Canadians,” Greer added in a Saturday-morning interview on Fox News. “We’ve said enough, and so we’ve taken countermeasures.” He also said the U.S. would “respond to Canadian retaliation.”

The new tariffs were imposed under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which has never been deployed before.

Ford wrote on X after Carney’s announcement, “The prime minister has my full support for a strong response — tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar.”