Canada vows retaliatory tariffs if Trump escalates trade war: ‘We will respond’

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(NEW YORK) — Canada vowed to respond with retaliatory tariffs if President Donald Trump slaps additional levies on Canadian goods as part of an expected announcement of sweeping new tariffs on Wednesday.

“We will respond to additional measures,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters on Tuesday. “We will put in place retaliatory measures if there are additional measures put against Canada tomorrow.”

The Trump administration last month imposed 25% tariffs on some goods from Canada. Initially, the tariffs applied to all Canadian goods, but a day later Trump issued a carve-out for goods compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, a free trade agreement.

In response to U.S. tariffs, Canada slapped a 25% retaliatory duty on $30 billion worth of goods and pledged additional measures.

Despite the trade turbulence on Tuesday, U.S. stocks rallied.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked up 30 points, or 0.1%, while the S&P 500 climbed 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq increased 0.8%.

Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Monday that he had settled on a course of action for the fresh round of tariffs set to take effect on April 2, though he declined to offer details.

Additional U.S. tariffs could elicit countermeasures from trade partners, exacerbating global trade tensions that erupted in response to a previous set of tariffs issued by the Trump administration last month.

Europe has a “strong plan” to retaliate against Trump’s planned tariffs, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in a speech on Tuesday.

“We will approach these negotiations from a position of strength. Europe holds a lot of cards, from trade to technology to the size of our market,” von der Leyen said.

Days earlier, Trump told reporters over the weekend that his tariffs could affect “all the countries.”

“The tariffs will be far more generous than those countries were to us, meaning they will be kinder than those countries were to the United States of America,” he said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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