Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Thursday hit back at U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly-announced 25% auto tariffs with a promise to “inflict as much pain as possible to the American people without inflicting pain on the Canadian population.”
Trump is mistaken in his belief that the move will drive down auto prices in the U.S., Ford told reporters. “The costs are going to go skyrocketing” and he’s “just hurting the American people,” Ford added, vowing that the country will retaliate with tariffs designed to hit Americans.
“I can tell you we just aren’t going to roll over,” he said. “We’re going to retaliate and he’s going to feel the pain from the American people.”
The “$65 billion of tariffs that we have on the table that we can launch towards the U.S., we have to run through every tariff and minimize the pain for Canadians, maximize the pain for Americans,” said Ford. “I feel terrible for the Americans, but it’s one person, it’s President Trump, that’s creating this chaos.”
On X, formerly Twitter, meanwhile, Ford slammed Trump ― who has repeatedly now talked up the idea of turning Canada into the 51st U.S. state ― for being “at it again.”
Trump “will do nothing more than increase costs for hard-working American families,” he warned. “U.S. markets are already on the decline as the president causes more chaos and uncertainty. He’s putting American jobs at risk.”
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“I’ve spoken with Prime Minister [Mark] Carney. We agree Canada needs to stand firm, strong and united,” he added. “I fully support the federal government preparing retaliatory tariffs to show that we’ll never back down.”
Ford has previously threatened to cut off electricity exports to America.