America's Talking - Ontario Walks Back U.S. Electricity Surtax After Trump Threats

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

(The Center Square) – Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday he would suspend the province's 25% tariff on U.S.-bound electricity after getting a meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and hours after President Donald Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canada. Ford previously said Tuesday he wouldn't budge on the electricity surtax until Trump dropped his tariff threats. Hours later, he changed course after scheduling a meeting Thursday with Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. "I'm not out to hurt the American people,” Ford told reporters in Toronto. "Sometimes you have to play your cards, and this is one of the cards we played, and hopefully we're going to have a very good constructive conversation." Ford reversed course hours after Trump said that he would double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum in response to the 25% tariffs Ontario put on electricity going to the U.S. Trump said the tariffs would cripple Canada's auto industry.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_89c85228-fea7-11ef-a8f0-1320f3e7e4bc.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAuliffe, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. The roller coaster ride that is President Donald Trump's ongoing trade disputes with Canada and the European Union continued this week with the province of Ontario, Canada backing off its threats to impose 25% tariffs on U.S.-bound electricity after Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canada. And Trump also, also said this week he would impose 200% tariffs on European wine and spirits, excuse me, in retaliation to the tariffs on U.S. alcohol. Joining me to discuss this is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square.

Casey, our colleague Brett Roland has been covering the ongoing tariff battles, and I think he's getting really dizzy over it. Tell us more. Yeah, I mean, I think Brett wanted to cover this because it's an important issue. It impacts average taxpayers, which of course is our angle here at the... at thecenter square.com, I'll say that, and it will have an impact on taxpayers, though, how much remains to be seen. It's going to shake out in the details. But it's been a kind of a dizzying beat, Dan, because as you kind of alluded to, there's changes almost every day on the

tariffs. Now, I think for, you know, American CEOs and for people watching the stock market closely, it's kind of disconcerting. It's worrying to some free market libertarians. It's very concerning because, you know, free trade is, is basically a theological tenet for many of them, and maybe rightly so, maybe not. But what we're seeing here from Trump is a couple of things. First, Trump is the America first president. I shouldn't have to say that, but I think it's worth saying in this context, because if you're thinking of this purely as economic policy, you're not seeing it from Trump's perspective. You know, remember that Trump has been running for years on how other countries are taking advantage of the U.S. You know, how,

China is manipulating their currency and doing other different things to take advantage of the U.S. exploiting tax loopholes, which we've also covered at the cindersquare.com. You know, for instance, NATO is not paying their fair share of the defense budget. And, you know, Trump even alluded to how Canada doesn't spend any money on defense. I mean, they spend like $27 billion a year, I think. But compared to the U.S., that's not very much. You know, they don't spend any on defense, Trump said, because they expect the U.S. to pay for their defense. So you have to see this tariff issue as part of the broader America first.

Other countries are taking advantage of us. And so I think Trump is really resetting the global order. I mean, what other countries can expect from us, how much they can expect to benefit from our, you know, our niceness, our kindness, really, because we are very kind to the world. Even without USA, we're very kind of the world. So he's right that many countries are able to invest in their social services and not pay for different. fence because they're counting on the U.S. And also many of these countries do impose tariffs on us. China has had, you know, different tariffs on us. I mean, random countries, Bermuda has tariffs on us. A lot of people have had tariffs on us before Trump took office. And so there is a lot of chaos here.

I think there's reason to be concerned. But when you look at it from the America first perspective, he's resetting the global order. So that's the first thing. And I'll toss it back to you after this, stand, but the second is the negotiating tactic. At first, this really seemed to be about getting the things that Trump wanted from other countries like Mexico and Canada protecting the border. But now that it's extended to the EU, I'm not so sure that it's just negotiating tactics anymore. I think we're more in the retaliatory tariff phase, which is where Trump's saying, if you're going to tariff us, we're going to tariff you. And he wants the tariffs to be fair as he sees fair. Yeah. And it is important to note that President Trump says he's playing, you know, playing a game is not the right

term, but this is a long-term negotiation tactic to balance the playing field, so to speak. But it is having real-world effects in the moment. You mentioned the stock market. We've seen some declines in the stock market since these trade battles have been going on. you know, Ontario's threat, but later retracted, to impose 25% tariffs on energy exports to the United States would have had an impact on consumers, particularly in the states of Michigan, Minnesota, and New York who do import some of their electricity from Canada. Heeding bill prices would be going up. Other energy prices would be going up for them. Now, they're not going to, but again, and this changes on a daily basis. Let's switch focus to the Trump's threats this week to impose tariffs on European wine and spirit imports.

He says, and this is true, that this is in retaliation or response to the European Union's long held tariffs on American spirits exported to Europe. So, I mean, there should be some fairness here, right? Yeah, I mean, I think the most issues Americans didn't even know these tariffs existed. They, you know, Egypt has tariffs on us, over 10% Morocco, Thailand, Brazil, Pakistan, India, Belize, Ethiopia. I mean, there's more and more, you mentioned the tariffs on spirit. So I think it's not as if the whole world was just having perfect free trade. And then Trump got elected and said, and invented tariffs. I mean, this has been going on for a long time. Biden, for President Joe Biden, he had, he implemented some tariffs. And so I think there's a little bit of hysteria in the media and reaction to this for what Trump's doing. If it stays very targeted, like, you know, we're only going to have tariffs on specific types of alcohol and the tariffs are going to be negotiated over time. I think that the average American consumer is not going to see a big change because of that. If we get whole entire sweeping tariffs against, you know,

everything that comes into certain and out of certain economies, that it will. will raise prices for Americans. So I will say, Dan, you know, Trump initiated these tariffs against China. He started at 10% and raised it up to 20% upon taking office. And of course, you don't, you know how much stuff we import from China. I mean, it's huge. And he also increased the taxes by removing a tax loophole that China was using to ship goods over here. So he increased the tariffs and the taxes on Chinese goods being shipped here. And in February, inflation decreased. it did not go up. So I don't know.

It's hard to know. I mean, all the standard conventional wisdom is this will definitely increase prices. But so far it seems it will be more complicated to that because the February inflation data looked very good. Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at the center square.com.