Carney: Latest Trump trade moves ‘relatively modest’

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday that President Trump’s latest round of tariffs is “relatively modest” compared with the United States’s past moves.

When talking with reporters at a Cabinet retreat in Banff, Alberta, Carney was asked if Canada was going to retaliate to added U.S. tariffs.

Carney said that his government was analyzing the “significant” impact “for individual companies and in individual sectors.”

“I would also recognize that in the context of other things that the U.S. administration has done — other measures the U.S. administration has done — that these are relatively modest measures,” the prime minister said.

The White House announced Tuesday that it would ban the import of some dairy products, motorcycles and most alcoholic beverages from Canada starting Sept. 29. This followed President Trump’s threat to ban Canadian private jet maker Bombardier from selling its products in U.S. markets.

Trump’s threat is already garnering backlash from GOP lawmakers , including Kansas Sens. Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall, who pointed out that the company was a major employer in the Sunflower State.

Carney confirmed that the two-day Cabinet retreat would involve discussions on the ongoing trade war’s impact and offer “a chance to draw that out in more detail” following the country’s own tariffs going into effect this week.

He also said that Canada is “always ready to sit down” because “there is a mutually beneficial deal possible that respects our sovereignty and is in the interests of both countries.”

“We take into context that the biggest impact we can have here in Canada is to focus on what we can control, building at home, diversifying abroad, and delivering for Canadians,” Carney said. “I engage with the president of the United States on a wide range of issues and issues of geopolitical defense and security.”

Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on $27.6 billion in American products went into effect Tuesday. The 15, 25 and 50 percent tariffs affected close to 6 percent of what the U.S. exported to Canada last year.