Canada is preparing for U.S. President Donald Trump to hit the country with potentially devastating tariffs on Tuesday, but the federal government and the premiers say they are in the dark about what will actually materialize and how high those promised levies will be.
Even Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the U.S. tariff czar, said Monday he doesn’t know what exactly will transpire tomorrow, saying it’s Trump who will make the final call.
“He’s going to decide today. We’re going to put it out tomorrow,” Lutnick said in an interview with CNN.
The president has said he wants to punish Canada for a supposedly lax approach to drugs and migrants even though data shows a border crackdown is already producing results.
“He knows they’ve done a good job on the border. They haven’t done enough on fentanyl. Let’s see how the president weighs that today,” Lutnick said.
But the commerce secretary said there’s no doubt some sort of trade action will come about tomorrow.
“We’re going to put out those tariffs,” he said.
There is, however, a chance the tariffs won’t be a high as 25 per cent, as Trump originally promised, Lutnick said in a Sunday interview with Fox News.
“It’s a fluid situation. There are going to be tariffs on Tuesday on Mexico and Canada — exactly what they are I’m going to leave that for the president and his team to negotiate,” Lutnick said.
If Trump doesn’t announce a decision at some point today, there’s a chance Trump’s 25 per cent levy on virtually all Canadian goods (with a 10 per cent tariff on energy) could automatically take effect just after midnight.
After Trump agreed to back down on tariffs for a month, he issued an executive order that said the tariffs “shall be paused and will not take effect until March 4, 2025, at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time.”
While U.S. President Donald Trump is adamant that tariffs will hit Canada, Mexico and China on Tuesday, his commerce secretary repeatedly hinted on U.S. media that Canada may not get hit full force with 25 per cent tariffs after all.
Internal Trade Minister Anita Anand said the government is waiting like the rest of the country to see what happens.
“We see numerous dates on different goods coming from the White House,” she said in an interview with CBC’s Rosemary Barton Live on Sunday.
Whatever the outcome, “we will meet any Trump tariffs dollar for dollar and we will retaliate to the tune of about $155 billion in aggregate. We are prepared for any eventuality,” Anand said.
That dollar figure is a reference to Canada’s plan the last time Trump threatened tariffs.
Counter-tariffs expected
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who just won a landslide majority government last week on an election promise to take on Trump and his tariffs, said the premiers are waiting to see what happens over the next 24 hours.
“We don’t know what’s coming tomorrow. I’m not even sure President Trump knows what’s coming tomorrow. We have to be prepared for anything and everything,” he told reporters at a mining conference in Toronto.
“We need to match President Trump tariff by tariff, dollar by dollar,” he said, vowing to support the federal government if and when it hits back at the U.S. for what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called “unjustified” tariffs.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford outlined his plan to ‘win this tariff war’ if Donald Trump makes good on his threat to impost a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian exports, saying he’s willing to act on a range of issues — including, if needed, cutting off energy exports from Ontario ‘with a smile on my face.’
Speaking to reporters in London after a bilateral meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on the sidelines of a conference on Ukraine’s future, Trudeau said Canada “will have a strong, unequivocal and proportional response, as Canadians expect.”
The confusion over what’s coming stems from Trump’s sometimes chaotic trade agenda. Some tariffs are earmarked to cajole countries to take action on certain issues, like drugs and migrants, while others, including ones promised for March 12, are designed to torpedo the Canadian steel and aluminum industries to bring production back to the U.S.
Trump has also asked the Commerce Department to do a total review of the country’s trading relationships and report back by April 1 — a study that could prompt another layer of tariffs on countries that Trump perceives as ripping off the U.S.
Canada has been racing to show the Americans that it takes Trump’s border-related concerns seriously.
The federal government’s efforts have produced results with the number of intercepted illegal migrants dropping by some 90 per cent in the last few months alone.
Despite Trump’s and Lutnick’s claims, data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released earlier this month shows there has also been a significant decrease in seizures of fentanyl coming from Canada.
The CBP’s own data registered a 97 per cent drop in January compared to December 2024 at the northern border — evidence, the Canadian government says, that its $1.3-billion border security package is already bearing fruit.
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) reported on Thursday that it and its law enforcement partners have made significant seizures at the border as part of “Operation Blizzard,” pulling in fentanyl and fentanyl pills, including busting two U.S. citizens at the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel earlier this month who were carrying enough of the deadly drug to kill an estimated 10,000 people.
