From pony fur to bamboo furniture, Trump’s trade war with Canada is getting even weirder

What do pony fur, sequins, golf carts, bamboo furniture and mezcal have in common? Until Tuesday evening, not much. Now they’re among what could soon be unlikely casualties of President Donald Trump’s intensifying trade war with Canada. The Trump administration added those items, among dozens of others, to a list of goods that could be subject to 50% tariffs — or outright banned — later this month if they’re imported into the United States from Canada. The White House said the move was aimed both at Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, which took effect Tuesday, and what the administration calls Canada’s “discriminatory” treatment of American goods. The new tariffs and import bans, it said on Tuesday, would help protect American workers, farmers and manufacturers from foreign competition. There’s just one small problem: The United States barely buys many of the products on that list from Canada. For example, Trump’s Canadian import bans apply to virtually all alcoholic beverages, including mezcal, a product Canada can’t legally produce domestically because of Mexican labeling rules. Pony fur falls under an umbrella category of animal furs that accounted for $468,330 of Canadian exports to the United States last year, according to US trade data. That’s roughly 0.0001% of the $334 billion worth of goods Canada exported to the United States. So how did these goods land on Trump’s hit list? A senior administration official said the items were deliberately chosen to lessen the financial hit for Americans. The products on the list aren’t ones the United States relies on Canada for, either because they are readily available domestically or can be imported from other trading partners. “The possibility that this could have any kind of meaningful impact on US prices – it doesn’t even make mathematical sense,” the official said on a call with reporters Tuesday previewing the president’s trade actions. Then there’s the symbolism. Trump included hockey sticks in his first round of tariffs on Canada that took effect last month — a nod to the sport that is deeply associated with Canadian identity. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney responded by putting American-made golf clubs on his own tariff list, a nod to Trump’s favorite sport. Neither product is a major part of US-Canada trade. Beyond the immediate economic impact, Trump’s latest list signals to Carney just how far he is willing to go and what could be next. “President Trump’s import ban covers only 0.25% of Canada’s exports to the US and will have little effect on either economy,” Stephen Brown, chief economist at Capital Economics, said in a note Wednesday. “Nonetheless, Trump’s willingness to impose an import ban is further evidence, if it were needed, that these latest measures are about inflicting economic pain [for Canada] rather than raising revenue,” he added. If that’s true, it would be a total 180 for Trump, who repeatedly said one of his top goals in imposing higher duties was to raise more revenue for the US government.