The duty as a weapon of pressure returned to the foreground this Saturday, after the president of the United States, donald trumpwill threaten Canada with such retaliation if its trade agreement with China is finalized.
Through his social network, Truth Social, the American president stated that in that case, he would punish the neighboring nation with 100% tariffs on all Canadian goods and products that enter the country, as report the agency Efe.
BREAKING: Donald Trump threatens Canada with 100% tariffs on “all Canadian goods and products” exported to the US. It’s after Canada agreed to ease tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in return for lower import taxes on Canadian farm products.https://t.co/D4yLDNVFA1 Sky 501 pic.twitter.com/dQIP8bDCSZ
— Sky News (@SkyNews) January 24, 2026
In his message, Trump noted that if Prime Minister Mark Carney “believes that he is going to turn Canada into an entry point for China to send goods and products to the United States, he is very wrong.”
In turn, he predicted that “China will swallow Canada completely, devour it mercilessly, destroying its businesses, its social fabric and its lifestyle.”
The new confrontation with one of its main trading partners on the continent comes after Carney delivered a widely supported speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in which he urged several developed countries to unite to confront the unequal relations that the great powers seek to impose.
The Canadian premier was very critical of what he considered a “rupture of the world order” based on the foundations of a new geopolitics in which the great military and economic powers would not be obliged to respect the rules.
Although Carney did not make explicit mention in his words, everyone assumed that they were directed at the aggressive foreign policy promoted by Trump since the beginning of his second term, visibly focused on the subordination of the rest of the world to his interests.
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Shortly after returning to Washington from Switzerland, Trump announced that he was withdrawing Canada’s invitation to join the newly created Peace Board, a US-led body that aims, among other things, to function as a parallel institution to the UN.
Mutual distrust
As part of his speech in Davos, Carney referred to the need to forge broad alliances between countries that share common objectives on different issues, in response to the current dependence on the swings generated by the latent trade war.
Trump’s threat to Canada takes as a reference Mark Carney’s recent visit to China to close a trade agreement, which among its measures includes the reduction of tariffs for the import of Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for other commercial compensation of that kind.
This movement is part of the strategy outlined by Canada to diversify its network of trade allies, at a time when the main one is exerting pressure that has made it an unreliable partner.
Shortly after his return to the White House, Trump began to carry out his threats to impose tariffs on many of the countries with which he maintained his strongest commercial ties, including Canada.
In the new chapter that was close to declaring a trade war on a global scale, the US president set tariffs on steel, aluminum, cars and wood from the neighboring country at 35%, exposing as a justification that he allowed the arrival of illegal immigrants and fentanyl.
Shortly after, bilateral negotiations were announced to resolve this episode, but so far the parties have not reached a definitive agreement.
