Trump administration won’t ‘just sit down and take’ further retaliation from Canada: Trade rep

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Wednesday said the Trump administration would not “just sit down and take” further retaliation from Canada after Ottawa introduced a dollar-for-dollar match on U.S. tariffs.

“If there’s further retaliation from the Canadian side, we, of course, we’re not going to just sit down and take that. Our view is don’t retaliate,” Greer said during an appearance on CBC’s “The National.”

“But I know that, you know, I know how people are feeling in Canada and what they think. So, you know, it’s unfortunate, but it is what it is. And we have our own trade policy, and we’ll proceed with it in the way that’s best for the United States,” he added.

President Trump introduced a 50 percent tariff on around $20 billion worth of Canadian goods on Sunday after attempting to negotiate an agreement that the U.S.’s northern neighbor ultimately backed out of .

Greer said Canada asked for some concessions that were considered “too much.”

“It wasn’t something we could do at the time,” he said Wednesday. “We felt that giving them the best deal in the world would have been enough to get us over the hump and put us on a positive track to even bigger and better things.”

Instead of acquiescing to the deal, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney responded with retaliatory import taxes that are set to go into effect on Sept. 8 .

The trade representative also acknowledged that the only other country to push back on tariffs with its own measures was China.

“Canada is the only country to retaliate against us besides China. And even with China, we’ve kind of settled out. So really, it’s just Canada at this point,” Greer said.

“We think they need to do more to protect the North American market,” he added.

The president has emphasized his goal of boosting domestic manufacturing and has pressured American companies not to outsource jobs and production by imposing sweeping tariffs on a long list of foreign trading partners.

The effort hit a roadblock earlier this year after the Supreme Court struck down the bulk of his emergency levies, but the administration has turned to other measures to implement import taxes.