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President Donald Trump has said he will impose a 50 percent fee on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, escalating his battle with one of the largest US trading partners.
“I have instructed my trade secretary to add an additional 25%fee to 50%, throughout the steel and aluminum coming to the United States from Canada, one of the highest tariff nations around the world,” Trump wrote on his social truth platform on Tuesday, pledging to fee Wednesday.
American aluminum and steel prices increased and US actions fell after the announcement, with the S&P 500 index below 0.8 percent, as the fear of the influence of Trump’s trade wars on the US economy deepened.
Trump said the mass was in retaliation for a 25 percent addition that Canada’s province in Ontario has set power exports to the US, raising electricity prices by about 1.5 million Americans in New York, Michigan and Minnesota.
In a subsequent social media post, Trump added: “Can you imagine Canada by stopping so much to use electricity, which affects the lives of innocent people as a chip and threat to shopping?”
The announcement is the latest in a series of Tit-Tat Salvotes between the US and Canada after the aggressive aggressive threats of Trump and economic nationalism threaten to break the North American trade.
Shortly after his inauguration, the US president said he would impose 25 percent tariffs in Canada and Mexico, but last week he gave a one-month return to goods that met the rules of a 2020 free trade agreement.
Aluminum and steel tariffs are part of a particular set of tasks that must be imposed on manufacturers around the world, which will take strength on Wednesday.
White house officials say 25 percent global tariffs for metal imports are intended to protect the US domestic industry.
Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford, who has publicly clashed with Trump in recent days, responded that the US markets were “having” in the US president’s trade policy. “He must lift his fees and come to the table to negotiate a fair trade agreement,” Ford wrote on X. “until he does, we will not withdraw.”
Despite slipping into the broader stock indices, shares in American steel manufacturers increased on Tuesday. American Stelellic grew by 4 percent, Nucor grew 2 percent and steel dynamics earned 1.5 percent.
A closely followed measure of aluminum prices in the US and London, called the Midwest Premium, increased significantly on Tuesday, underlining the increasing costs facing US industrial groups.
The future of the premium tracking, which follows the prices of metals scattered in plants in Midwest, USA, increased by up to 18 percent, according to Factset data.
Trump said that if Canada did not leave its “long -term” tariffs, he would “significantly” increase taxes on cars coming to the US, an action he said “in essence, would permanently close” the country’s car industry.
Trump, who also suggested that the northern US neighbor could no longer be assured that Washington would defend it militarily, added that “the only thing that makes it sense for Canada to become our beloved state. It would make all the fees, and everything else would disappear.”
Canada has strongly refused such suggestions from Trump since he became president in January.
