Trump Reaches For A 1930 Tariff Law To Hit Canada With 50% Duties – But Not On These Items

President Donald Trump signed three proclamations Monday imposing an additional 50 percent tariff on a broad list of Canadian goods, accusing Canada of discriminating against American dairy, alcohol, and auto exports. The White House said the president was acting to hold Canada accountable for what it called “continued discrimination” against U.S. commerce, according to The Epoch Times. The duties take effect in 30 days.

This is not a blanket levy on everything crossing the northern border, and what got left out is as revealing as what got hit. Oil – of which Canada is the largest foreign supplier to American refineries – is exempt. So is potash, the fertilizer input U.S. farmers depend on and cannot readily source elsewhere. Fish and critical minerals are out. So are goods already carrying national-security tariffs, including steel and many auto parts, per the White House fact sheet.

What remains is still enormous. The covered list runs from milk and cream to alcohol, hockey equipment, food products, construction materials, clothing, furniture, technology, and car parts, ABC News reported from a senior administration official’s briefing. That official put the range at “wine to hockey sticks to cement.” The automobile proclamation alone lists 18 pages of eligible goods.

Rather than the emergency powers that underpinned earlier rounds, these proclamations invoke Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 – a Depression-era provision allowing duties of up to 50 percent against countries found to discriminate against American commerce. It has sat essentially unused for decades. Reporting on the action notes the statute permits exactly the 50 percent ceiling the administration went to, and that reaching for a dormant 1930 authority is likely to draw court challenges quickly. The 30-day runway before the tariffs bite is the window in which those challenges would be filed.

The duties apply whether or not the goods previously qualified for exemption under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Trump’s own renegotiated North American trade deal, in other words, will not shield Canadian exporters from this round.

As justification, the administration official pointed to Canadian provincial conduct on alcohol: all but two provinces and territories have halted the purchase, distribution, or retailing of American alcoholic beverages while imposing no comparable restrictions on other countries. The official also cited Canadian tariffs on some American cars and the long-running dairy quota dispute, framing the action as “leveling the playing field for crucial American exports.”

Canada is one of only two countries – China being the other – to have retaliated against Trump’s earlier tariffs, and the administration has said repeatedly it intends to make an example of both. The Associated Press notes the move risks a fresh round of economic disruption, with higher consumer prices and further deterioration in a relationship that was among Washington’s closest before this term.