Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Tuesday said he was temporarily suspending his province’s planned 25% surcharge on electricity exported to the U.S. after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick agreed to renewed trade talks.
Ford said he and Lutnick “had a productive conversation about the economic relationship between the United States and Canada” earlier Tuesday.
“We have both agreed, let cooler heads prevail,” Ford told reporters.
The comments came after U.S. President Donald Trump escalated an already hot trade war early Tuesday morning, by saying he would double planned tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imports to 50%.
Trump announced those heightened tariffs on the heels of Ford saying that he would impose the surcharge on electricity imports to Michigan, New York and Minnesota.
Ford said Lutnick agreed to meet with him and the U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to discuss a renewed United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.
After the call between Ford and Lutnick, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro confirmed to CNBC that Trump would not move forward with the additional 25% tariff he had threatened earlier in the day.
But the White House said that the originally planned 25% tariff on “steel and aluminum with no exceptions or exemptions will go into effect for Canada and all of our other trading partners at midnight” Wednesday.
“President Trump has once again used the leverage of the American economy, which is the best and biggest in the world, to deliver a win for the American people,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.
Trump has said he will impose tariffs of 25% on other goods imported from Canada beginning April 2.
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