Prime Minister Mark Carney’s administration won the Canadian election on April 28 in support of U.S. President Donald Trump’s commitment to imposing billions of dollars in imports from the United States in response to U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods.
During the campaign, automakers will be offered probation as long as they maintain production and investment in Canada.
This is outlined on May 7 in the official government newspaper Canadian Gazette, and the suspension of tariffs on products used in food and beverage processing and packaging, health, manufacturing, national security and public safety.
Oxford Economics said in a report this week that exemptions cover many categories of products, so tariff rates on the U.S. were actually reduced to “nearly zero.”
Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre flipped into the claims widely cited by the media, accusing Carney of “quietly lowering retaliatory tariffs to ‘almost zero’ without telling anyone.
