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The US will impose a tariff of 35 per cent on Canadian goods from August 1, Donald Trump said in a letter late on Thursday.
The US president separately told NBC News on Thursday that any countries that had not received a letter from him setting out new tariff regimes would face so-called blanket tariffs of 15-20 per cent.
“We’re just going to say all of the remaining countries are going to pay, whether it’s 20 per cent or 15 per cent. We’ll work that out now,” Trump told NBC News in a phone interview.
“I think the tariffs have been very well-received. The stock market hit a new high today,” Trump added. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both closed at all-time highs on Thursday.
The letter to Canada, one of the US’s biggest trading partners, comes in a week in which Trump has threatened tariffs on more than 20 countries along with levies of 200 per cent on pharmaceuticals. He also announced tariffs of 50 per cent on copper imports.
Trump has given countries until August 1 to avert his levies, pushing back the July 9 deadline this week when his “reciprocal” tariffs originally announced in April were set to be reapplied to countries that had not reached a deal with the US.
The Canadian dollar dropped about 0.4 per cent against its US counterpart after the announcement. US stock index futures declined, with those tracking the blue-chip S&P 500 index down 0.5 per cent.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney earlier this month dropped a digital services tax that had attracted Trump’s ire for targeting US technology companies in a bid to smooth over trade tensions.
The 3 per cent levy on the revenue of the biggest technology companies was due to come into force on June 30.
This is a developing story
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