The president assured at a press conference that his country is preparing to counterattack the measure announced by the US president, Donald Trump, in case he continues with what has described as “unjustified tariffs.”
“Canada will have an immediate and extremely strong response, as Canadians expect,” Trudeau said. “If tariffs are imposed, it will be hard for Canadians and Canadian companies, but also for Americans and US companies, which is a point that we insist south of the border every time we have the opportunity,” he added.
It is expected that Ottawa reactivates his reprisal plan against Washington by imposing taxes on US products worth 103.8 billion dollars at the time the US measure is entering into force.
“We cannot allow this scourge to continue damaging the US and, therefore, until it stops or limited itself seriously, the proposed tariffs scheduled to enter into force on March 4, in fact, they will enter into force as planned,” he wrote in his social truth account.
In addition, he pointed out that China will be imposed – where, as he says, “they are manufactured and supplied” drugs in the form of a fentanyl – an additional 10 % from that date. Imports of products from the Asian country already face US tariffs of 10 % since the beginning of this month.
“Tariff and blackmail pressure”
For his part, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce of China recalled Friday that Beijing has repeatedly declared that unilateral tariffs violate the norms of the World Trade Organization and undermine the multilateral trade system, so he firmly opposes them.
“The US has always ignored the objective facts and previously imposed a 10 % tariff on China alleging fentanyl and other reasons. This time it threatened to impose tariffs again. This behavior is nothing more than a way of ‘blame’, which does not contribute to solving their own problems. In addition, it will increase the burden on US companies and consumers and undermine the stability of the world industrial chain,” he added.
In this sense, the spokesman said that Beijing expects Washington to “not make the same error over and over again” and return as soon as possible to the “right path” of properly solving the differences through a dialogue on equal foot. “If the US insists on following its own path, China will take all the necessary countermeasures to defend their legitimate rights and interests,” he warned.
Lin Jian, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said that Washington has used the question of fentanyl “to insist on tariff pressure and blackmail”, ensuring that “he has created a serious impact, pressure, coercion and threat to dialogue and cooperation between both parties in the field of drug control.” In this regard, he warned that US tariffs would be counterproductive.
On February 1, Trump signed two executive orders to impose 25 % tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, also establishing 10 % rates for Canadian energy resources. However, two days later he announced that an agreement had been reached to pause the measure for a month.
With RT information.
