Canada will fight Trump’s copper tariff, Joly vows

Donald Trump says a 50 per cent tariff on imported copper will come into effect as of Aug. 1, citing national security concerns. Mike Le Couteur has more.

Canada will fight back against U.S. President Donald Trump’s 50 per cent tariff on copper imports, Industry Minister Melanie Joly said Thursday.

“We’ll fight against it. Period,” said the minister, without getting into specifics. Trump vowed on Truth Social Wednesday evening the tariff would come into force on Aug. 1.

Trump heralded the metal as the “most used material by the Department of Defense!” in his social media post, promising to bolster an American copper industry that will dominate the world.

“THIS IS, AFTER ALL, OUR GOLDEN AGE!” he wrote.

According to Natural Resources Canada, the U.S. was the country’s largest copper importer in 2023, accounting for 52 per cent of the total export value, followed by China and Japan. That same year, Canada’s exports of copper and copper-based products were valued at $9.3 billion.

Chile, Canada and Peru accounted for more than 90 per cent of the United States’ refined copper imports last year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

“Every day we are in a tariff war, and we are defending ourselves,” Joly told a group of reporters Thursday morning in Vancouver. She said her team had not seen details of Trump’s plan, but that she had already spoken with representatives of prominent mining company Glencore and Teck Resources over the phone.

Trade deal deadline approaches

Canada and the U.S. have lobbed wide-ranging tariffs and counter-tariffs at each other throughout their months-long trade war. But Trump’s copper tariffs turn up the heat on negotiations that are meant to resolve in a matter of days – Prime Minister Mark Carney and Trump are supposed to ink a trade deal on July 21.

At least, that’s what the two leaders announced during the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta., in June. However, some have cast doubt on that timeline.

Notably, the American ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, refused to commit to that date during an interview with CTV News on July 4. He also said that an eventual deal, whenever it may come, would be “good” for Canada and the U.S.

Last month, Carney vowed to adjust counter-tariffs on steel and aluminum products to levels “consistent” with progress at the negotiating table by July 21.

He did not specify what those counter-tariffs would amount to.

Trump can drop tariffs quickly: lawyer

Reaching a deal is doable within the next 11 days so long as that deal is limited in scope, according to international trade lawyer William Pellerin.

If that deal is constrained to a security pact, where Canada collaborates with the U.S. on defence commitments and drug trafficking prevention, such an arrangement could be enough to persuade the president to withdraw his tariffs, Pellerin said.

After all, the tariffs against Canada were put into place via executive action. “He can similarly remove them,” Pellerin told CTV News Channel.

“If the U.S., though, wants to reopen every other trade irritant under the sun … then this could be something that takes a very long time and it’s just not achievable this summer.”

With files from CTVNews.ca’s Hunter Crowther