Softwood lumber tariffs soar as Carney’s plan fails to deliver

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No deal is better than a bad deal – that’s the message Prime Minister Mark Carney and his team keep selling to Canadians as their efforts to find a deal with Donald Trump falter.

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That message became harder to sell Friday night as duties on softwood lumber skyrocketed to 35%.

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It’s a major blow to Canada’s industry, which a year ago saw duties rise from 8.05% to 14.54% under the Biden administration. The Trump administration had recently bumped those tariffs up further to 20.56% and now, as of Friday night, the total cumulative tariff is 35.19%.

B.C.’s Forestry Minister Ravi Parmar called the move “absurd and reckless,” but in the early hours after the change was made public there was no comment from the Carney government.

Since Carney won the election, tariffs on steel and aluminum have gone from 25% to 50%, copper has had a 50% tariff added to it, anything related to automotive deemed not compliant with CUSMA has a 50% tariff, general exports not covered by CUSMA have a 35% tariff and now so too does softwood lumber.

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This wasn’t what Mark Carney was promising as he campaigned to lead the country.

“I know the President, I’ve dealt with the President in the past in my previous roles when he was in his first term, and I know how to negotiate,” Carney said during the Liberal leadership race that led to him becoming PM.

We’ve gone from Carney saying he knows Trump and how to negotiate to saying no deal is better than a bad one while the Americans don’t return his calls and tariffs continue to rise.

Carney has completely changed his tune on the impact of tariffs and Trump’s impact on the Canadian economy. During the election campaign he portrayed Trump’s tariffs as a existential threat to Canada, that the U.S. President was trying to break us – now, it’s no big deal.

“We’re in a situation right now where 85% of our trade with the United States is tariff free,” Carney said Friday when asked about the situation.

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That’s true to a degree now, but it was also true when Carney was whipping up fear in the population, talking about elbows up and driving a huge anti-American sentiment for political gain. He’s only shifted to this latest message when it became clear Canada wasn’t getting a deal by the Aug. 1 deadline set by Trump.

As I noted in a recent column, we went from the Trump administration – senior officials like Howard Lutnick and Jamieson Greer – calling Canada a top priority for a trade deal in March to where we are today. The Americans have lost interest in talking to Carney’s team, and they have described the tactic as not really negotiating, just making demands.

Again, that’s not what Carney promised.

It takes two to tango in any scenario, but when every other G7 country is now covered by a deal and when Mexico has an extension and exemption from further tariffs, maybe it’s time to ask if we are the problem and change tactics. Whatever Carney and his team have been doing clearly has not been working.

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Carney hasn’t spoken to Trump since June 26; that was the day our PM told the Americans we were going ahead with the Digital Services Tax. The next day, Trump broke off all talks with Canada and two days later Carney announced he was cancelling the DST.

Since then, we’ve had several tariff increases and a jobs report showing 51,000 full-time jobs lost last month.

One of the slogans Carney liked to use during the election was that a plan beats no plan. I’d love to hear what he says about what to do when a plan clearly isn’t working.

blilley@postmedia.com

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