LILLEY: Carney dropped most tariffs the day after meeting Trump
Looks like despite all of Mark Carney's tough talk, his elbows were never really up.
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Turns out “elbows up” means reducing tariffs on American imports to near zero.
Despite all the rhetoric from Mark Carney and the Liberals, a new report shows that Canada has effectively eliminated tariffs on most goods. Oxford Economics, a global advisory firm, looked into the matter and found tariffs are nullified by exemptions and suspensions to effectively mean the tariffs are either gone or near zero in most cases.
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LILLEY: Carney dropped most tariffs the day after meeting Trump Back to video
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“It’s a very strategic approach from a new prime minister to really say, ‘We’re not going to have a retaliation,'” Tony Stillo, Oxford’s director of Canada economics, said in an interview with Bloomberg this week.
“It’s a strategic play on the government’s part to not damage the Canadian economy.”
So far, the Carney government hasn’t commented on the report, but it does raise questions about all the tough talk during the election and since.
“We must respond with both purpose and force,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said in response to American tariffs. Those comments were made on April 3 as Carney stood in Ottawa reacting to Donald Trump’s flurry of tariffs on his so-called “Liberation Day.”
A week later, Carney was campaigning in Hamilton when he said Canadian counter-tariffs were meant to hurt Americans.
“We are fighting unjustified U.S. tariffs, including those on steel and autos with counter tariffs of our own and that those are designed to cause maximum pain in the United States, but have only a minimal impact here in Canada,” Carney said.
He framed these counter tariffs as the patriotic thing to do, an action that was needed to protect workers.
Or not, it seems.
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Turns out that on April 16, in the middle of the election campaign, the Carney cabinet made the decision to eliminate most tariffs on most goods, suspending collecting on them until October. This decision took effect on May 7, the day it was published in the Canada Gazette.
Seems few, if anyone, noticed until this week and Oxford’s report.
When Carney took that photo with President Trump, both smiling and giving a thumbs up at the White House, was this because Carney had told Trump the tariffs were coming off the next day? The effective elimination of the tariffs took place the day after Carney met Trump at the White House, so it might have been a good idea for the PM to admit that public and add it to the discussion about how he is trying to deal with the Americans.
That wouldn’t fit with his tough talking, elbows up rhetoric though.
At that White House meeting, Carney couldn’t find his elbows as he sat there listening to Trump bad mouth Canada, our economy, Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland. It’s probably good that he didn’t start punching back verbally or he would have received the Zelenskyy treatment.
That said, Carney acted just the way he warned voters that Pierre Poilievre would have acted. To Liberal voters though, none of this will matter – they still cheer on their man and his every move.
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Personally, I cheer for Canada, and right now, Canada needs a new deal with the United States. China already has one, the UK has one.
We could be in the middle of negotiating one, we could even be close and you’d never know because what Carney says in public and what he says and does behind closed doors are two very different things.
“It should take half a day to get a deal done, we negotiated a deal with China in a weekend,” one American diplomat said recently.
He went on to say the Canadian side knows all the trade irritants because the Americans have been raising them for years, we just need to start talking.
Carney has already shown us that his elbows are down. For the good of the country, he should drop the tough talk and start negotiating a new deal for Canada in Washington.
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