(Bloomberg) — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that Prime Minister Mark Carney did an “about-face” by striking a deal with China to lower some trade barriers, reinforcing President Donald Trump’s latest tariff threat against Canada.
“The Canadians a few months ago joined the US in putting high steel tariffs on China because the Chinese are dumping,” Bessent said Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “The Europeans also have done the same thing. And it looks like that Prime Minister Carney may have done some kind of about-face.”
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Canada this month agreed to lower tariffs on 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles to 6%, removing a 100% surtax, as part of the wide-ranging deal aimed at rebuilding ties with Beijing. Carney said he expects China to cut tariffs on Canadian rapeseed following a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump and key administration officials have denounced that bilateral agreement and warned of potential consequences, including an additional levy for Canadian goods, portending a difficult renegotiation for the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement scheduled in the summer.
On Sunday, Bessent said Canada could face 100% tariffs from the US if the country enters into a free-trade agreement with China and allows itself to become a place where artificially cheap goods can enter the US supply chain, particularly when it comes to automobile manufacturing.
He warned that China could face additional penalties including tariffs, as well, if the agreement go further than what has already been announced.
“We have a highly integrated market with Canada,” Bessent said. “The goods can cross across the border during the manufacturing process six times. And we can’t let Canada become an opening that the Chinese pour their cheap goods into the U.S.”
Canada’s minister in charge of US trade, Dominic LeBlanc, said Saturday that Ottawa isn’t pursuing a free trade agreement with China and that the agreements between Carney and Xi aimed to resolve tariff disputes.
Bessent also raised the prospect of a renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal this summer but didn’t specify how the recent disagreement would factor into that process.
Trump warned Canada of 100% tariffs in a Truth Social post Saturday, saying that if Carney “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken.”
