Wilkinson says U.S. voices against Trump tariffs will ‘get louder’

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OTTAWA — National Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson says he expects U.S. President Donald Trump to run into more vocal opposition, including from his fellow Republicans, if he continues to threaten Canada and Mexico with across-the-board tariffs.

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“I do think those voices are going to get louder,” said Wilkinson on Thursday, speaking to reporters from Washington, D.C.

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“You’ve already head from a number of (Republican) senators, including (Iowa) Senator (Chuck) Grassley, who’ve raised concerns… about both the tariffs and the response from Canada.”

Grassley, the Senate’s longest-tenured member, urged Trump on Monday to exempt Canadian potash, claiming a steep levy on the potassium-based fertilizer input would wreak havoc on Iowa’s family-run farms.

“I plead (with) President Trump to exempt potash from the tariff because family farmers get most of our potash from Canada,” Grassley posted on X.

Grassley wasn’t the only Republican lawmaker to take to social media to question Trump’s eagerness to slap 25-per-cent tariffs on two of America’s closest allies and biggest trade partners.

Rand Paul, a Kentucky Senator known for his libertarian leanings, said on Saturday that a tariff is just a tax by another name.

“Conservatives once united against new taxes,” griped Paul.

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Trump outlined on Saturday his plan to place 25-per-cent tariffs on all Canadian goods except energy, which would be tariffed at 10 per cent, starting Tuesday, Feb. 4.

On Monday night, Trump put the tariffs on hold for 30 days, after striking a deal with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on border security. He paused tariffs on Mexico earlier in the day after getting similar border assurances from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Trudeau had threatened to hit back with tariffs on more than $150 billion of U.S. products before the 30-day truce was called.

Major U.S. stock indexes fell sharply on Monday as investors braced for a trade war.

Trump’s Republican Party holds slim majorities in both houses of Congress, but this doesn’t automatically give the president carte blanche to push his agenda through Capitol Hill.

Internal Republican divisions have already surfaced over the appointment of Trump Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who needed a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance to survive his Senate confirmation hearings.

Trump has thus far avoided a major revolt among his fellow Republicans over tariffs, but tensions could rise if he continues to fall short on his campaign promise to bring down the price of groceries and other essentials.

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(An outbreak of avian flu across U.S. poultry farms has caused the price of eggs to soar to historic levels, jumping more than 20 per cent since January.)

Mexico and Canada are the two largest exporters of food to the U.S., meaning that the pain of tariffs and counter-tariffs would hit grocery bills especially hard.

Wilkinson said he hoped the current impasse would spark “some conversations” about making Canada’s oil infrastructure less dependent on the U.S. but added that any new pipelines would require the buy-in of provinces, like Quebec, that have previously opposed such projects.

Quebec Premier François Legault said on Tuesday that there’s no “social acceptability” in the province for a large-scale interprovincial pipeline project like the scrapped Energy East pipeline, but added that this could change.

Wilkinson said the American business community is also quietly pushing back against Trump’s tariff threats.

“I would tell you that every American business and every American business association that I have met with (agrees) that tariffs on Canada don’t make any sense from an economic perspective,” said Wilkinson.

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“They obviously, though, need to be sensitive to the relationship that they have with the new administration, which is going to be in power for at least the next four years,” he added.

“Coming out publicly and berating the administration is probably not the right thing for them to do, and I think they they fully recognize that.”

Wilkinson said this could change, depending on how the next phase of Canada-U.S. negotiations plays out.

“I expect that if we do see this move forward in a less constructive manner, you will hear some of those voices start to be a bit more public.”

National Post
rmohamed@postmedia.com

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