US President Donald Trump has said he will impose a 35% tariff on Canadian goods starting on 1 August, just days before a deadline set by the two countries to reach a new trade deal, the BBC reported.
Trump announced the new tariff in a letter published on his Truth Social platform, the 11 July report said.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government would continue to protect his country’s workers and businesses as they head towards the new deadline.
The 35% tariff was an increase from the current 25% rate that Trump had assigned to Canada and was a blow to Carney, who was seeking to agree a trade pact with Washington, a 10 July Reuters report said.
An exclusion for goods covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on trade was expected to stay in place, and 10% tariffs on energy and fertiliser were also not set to change, although Trump had not made a final decision on those issues, an administration official was quoted as saying by Reuters.
At the time of the report, Trump had sent more than 20 letters outlining his tariff plans to other US partners and had also said he would soon announce new tariffs on the European Union.
As with the Canada letter, Trump has vowed to implement those tariffs by 1 August, giving countries around the world until then to strike a deal with the USA, the BBC wrote.
In an interview with NBC News reported by LBC News, Trump said he planned to hit most US trade partners with higher blanket tariffs.
“We’re just going to say all of the remaining countries are going to pay, whether it’s 20% or 15%,” he was quoted as saying.
Trump linked the tariffs on Canada to what he called “Canada’s failure” to stop the flow of fentanyl into the USA, as well as Canada’s existing levies on US dairy farmers and the trade deficit between the two countries, the BBC wrote.
“If Canada works with me to stop the flow of fentanyl, we will, perhaps, consider an adjustment to this letter. These tariffs may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your country,” Trump said.
According to US Customs and Border Patrol data reported by the BBC, only about 0.2% of all seizures of fentanyl entering the USA are made at the Canadian border. Almost all of the rest is confiscated at the US border with Mexico.
Canada is the USA’s second-largest trading partner after Mexico, and the largest buyer of US exports, according to the Reuters report. It bought US$349.4bn of US goods last year and exported US$412.7bn of goods to the USA, according to US Census Bureau data.
The USA is also Canada’s top market for canola products, with the total export value of Canadian canola exports to the USA reaching CAN$7.7bn (US$5.63bn) in 2024 including 3.3M tonnes of canola oil and 3.8M tonnes of canola meal, according to the Canola Council of Canada.
In an earlier announcement, Trump said the USA would impose a 50% tariff from 1 August on all imports from Brazil, Reuters reported on 10 July.
Trump linked the tariffs to Brazil’s treatment of former President Jair Bolsonaro who is on trial over charges of plotting a coup, the report said.
The levies were imposed due “in part to Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans”, the letter said.
The USA is Brazil’s second largest trading partner after China and the tariffs were a major increase on the 10% rate announced in April, Reuters wrote.
