OTTAWA — Canada’s traditional relationship with the United States is over, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday in response to President Donald Trump’s potentially crippling auto tariffs.
Carney said he expects to speak to Trump in the coming days. The president reached out to his office on Wednesday, but the Canadian leader has said Trump must first respect Canada’s sovereignty.
“The old relationship we had with the United States, based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over,” Carney said on Parliament Hill, after breaking from the federal campaign trail on Wednesday night in the face of Trump’s latest threats.
“We must fundamentally reimagine our economy. We will need to ensure that Canada can succeed in a drastically different world.”
The president announced Wednesday his plan to impose 25 percent tariffs next week on auto imports from Canada, the European Union, Japan and South Korea. Trump has also said he will announce a sweeping set of reciprocal tariffs on many U.S. trading partners.
Carney returned to Ottawa to convene his Cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations. Canada has said it is prepared to retaliate, but Carney said he wouldn’t tip his hand because the country faced a “comprehensive” and “broad” negotiation.
If Trump doesn’t change his mind, and the tariffs are implemented as planned, the auto industry in both countries will shut down within a week, Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association of Canada, told POLITICO on Thursday.
“One day, two days, three days where you hope the president shows you mercy. You’re a publicly traded company whose share price is taking a beating, and you have a fiduciary obligation to shareholders,” he said.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he spoke to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick late Wednesday about the impact of the tariffs on his province.
Ford said Lutnick told him that, as POLITICO has reported, cars imported from Canada and Mexico would be taxed based on the amount of non-U.S. content in the vehicle. If a car made in Mexico contains 50 percent American content and 50 percent foreign, the 25 percent tariff rate would be cut in half.
“He’s reassuring us that there’ll be no plant closures. My response was Ronald Reagan’s response: Trust but verify,” Ford told reporters at Queen’s Park. “If they’re opening or closing, it’s going to be up to the CEOs.”
Ford said he also spoke to Carney and they agreed Canada would follow through on its full tariff retaliation, if necessary. Ottawa has said it would be ready to respond with up to C$155 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products.
Trump shot back on Truth Social early Thursday, posting: “If the European Union works with Canada in order to do economic harm to the USA, large scale Tariffs, far larger than currently planned, will be placed on them both in order to protect the best friend that each of those two countries has ever had!”
Carney brushed off that threat, saying Canada is a sovereign country that will make its own decisions.
“What is clear is that we as Canadians have agency, we have power. We are masters in our own home,” Carney said. “We can control our destiny.”
Carney and Trump have not spoken since he was elected Liberal Party leader on March 9, succeeding Justin Trudeau. Carney said he had no plans to travel to Washington, although some members of his Cabinet might make the trip/
A phone call between the two leaders would be a better option than an Oval Office visit, Volpe said.
“I don’t think it’s in anybody’s interest in Canada to get Zelenskyy-ed. They’ve shown that they lack the class to treat an ally whose people are dying with any respect. I imagine that we’d be risking that as well,” Volpe told POLITICO on Thursday.
Volpe said Canada needs to be patient, and let the economic harm that will unfold in the U.S. take hold.
“What if we go to the other side and everything shuts down, and 950,000 U.S. auto workers are sitting around? That’s ugly, but that’s also hopeful,” Volpe said. “That’s a whole group that people are going to have to hear from, and they’re not going to talk about the price of eggs. They’re going to talk about how to make rent.”
Lana Payne, the president of Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, called on the government to protect auto workers, while sending a defiant message to Trump.
“If you think you can shift production, factories, mills and reinvest in the United States out of Canada, and think that you’re going to have open access to our market, you need to think again,” she said after a meeting with Ontario auto workers.
Canadian premiers, who will meet with Carney on Friday, also expressed solidarity.
“Here’s the thing: Donald Trump is trying to create uncertainty all over the world, in Canada included. And he’s trying to make people panic so that he can get a deal that takes advantage of us,” said Manitoba’s Wab Kinew.
Quebec Premier François Legault called for an immediate renegotiation of the United States-Canada-Mexico Agreement, but acknowledged that might not be feasible with Trump.
“It has to happen as soon as possible because right now we cannot start negotiating piece by piece a new agreement,” he said. “But we have to be realistic. Is Mr. Trump open to this negotiation?”
Mexico, Canada and South Korea have duty-free access to the U.S. auto market under the terms of free trade agreements that Trump renegotiated during his first term in office.
Mayors from Canada, Mexico and the United States are in Washington on Friday for a trade summit, where they will push for tariff relief.
Candace Laing, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said the tariffs amount to “throwing away” tens of thousands of jobs in the automotive sector in both countries. Under Trump’s tariffs, the cost of a pickup truck would rise by $8,000. Almost one-quarter of North American vehicles are produced by the deeply integrated Ontario-Michigan supply chain.
The United States imported $214 billion worth of passenger cars in 2024, according to U.S. Commerce Department data. Trump said the U.S. would start collecting the new duties on cars and light trucks on April 3, which is just one week away.