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Source: Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — Cracks in the Opposition B.C. Conservative Party became cavernous last week when one MLA was kicked out of caucus and another two followed in solidarity.

Dallas Brodie, Tara Armstrong and Jordan Kealy say they will sit in the legislature as Independents for now, but will “explore” the idea of forming a new political party, since the threshold for party status in the B.C. legislature is two members.

Here’s what party status could mean for the former Conservatives.

DOES IT MEAN MONEY?

If they form a party, the rebel Conservative caucus would get an annual budget of about $767,000 for staffing and office expenses, according to the clerk or the legislative assembly.

That’s about $122,000 more than they would collectively receive as Independents under a $215,000 individual entitlement.

With their ranks reduced from 44 to 41, funding for the B.C. Conservative caucus will meanwhile dip to $5.33 million. The NDP government caucus receives about $3.54 million a year. It’s less than the Opposition gets because government ministers receive separate funding for offices.

The B.C. Greens, who have two MLAs, receive about $659,000.

WHAT ABOUT SALARIES?

A party leader for the trio would be entitled to a pay rise of $29,883.19 a year, while both the house leader and caucus whip would get an extra $11,953.27. That’s on top of the annual salary for legislators of $119,532.72.

WHAT ABOUT FUNDS FOR THE PARTY?

Elections BC provides an annual allowance to political parties based on how many votes their candidates received at the most recent provincial election. But the elections body says a new party would not qualify because it did not exist on election day.

The Election Act says parties are eligible for an annual allowance if they receive either two per cent of votes across B.C., or five per cent of votes in ridings where the party runs candidates.

WHAT ELSE DOES PARTY STATUS MEAN?

It’s not just about money. Becoming a party would mean more time to speak in the legislature.

Representatives of official caucuses get to participate in question period every day the legislature sits. That’s significantly more than Independent members, who only ask questions on an agreed-upon schedule.

Party leaders also get more time to speak to motions that are brought to the house.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 11, 2025.

Ashley Joannou, The Canadian Press

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A law firm targeted by President Donald Trump over its legal services during the 2016 presidential campaign sued the federal government Tuesday over an executive order that seeks to strip its attorneys of security clearances.

The order, which Trump signed last week, was designed to punish Perkins Coie by suspending the security clearances of the firm’s lawyers as well as denying firm employees access to federal buildings and terminating their federal contracts.

It was the latest retributive action taken by Trump against the legal community, coming soon after an earlier order that targeted security clearances of lawyers at a separate law firm who have provided legal services to special counsel Jack Smith, who led criminal investigations into the Republican before his second term.

Perkins Coie represented the 2016 presidential campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent, and also represented Democrats in a variety of voting rights challenges during the 2020 election. The firm made headlines in 2017 when it was revealed to have hired a private investigative research firm during the 2016 campaign to conduct opposition research on Trump. That firm, Fusion GPS, subsequently retained a former British spy, Christopher Steele, who researched whether Trump and Russia had suspicious ties.

Lawyers representing Perkins Coie said in their lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, that the executive order was an illegal act of retaliation. They called on a judge to block it from being implemented. A hearing was set for Wednesday afternoon.

The lawsuit notes that the two primary attorneys whose work appears to have most angered Trump left the firm years ago and accounted for a tiny fraction of the firm’s more than 1,200 attorneys. They said the order had already hurt the firm’s revenue and bottom line, noting that some clients of clients have “terminated their engagements” over the last week, and illegally discriminated against the firm based on viewpoint.

“The Order is an affront to the Constitution and our adversarial system of justice. Its plain purpose is to bully those who advocate points of view that the President perceives as adverse to the views of his Administration, whether those views are presented on behalf of paying or pro bono clients,” the lawsuit states.

Trump had sued the law firm in 2022, along with Clinton, FBI officials and other defendants, as a part of a sprawling complaint alleging a massive conspiracy to concoct the Russia investigation that shadowed much of his administration. The suit was dismissed.

Eric Tucker, The Associated Press

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is once again lashing out at three of his biggest irritants: foreign steel, foreign aluminum and Canada.

Trump on Wednesday will effectively plaster 25% taxes – tariffs – on all steel and aluminum imports. And on Tuesday the president said the U.S. would double the forthcoming levy on the two metals to 50% if they come from Canada — only for the White House to pull back its threat by the afternoon after the province of Ontario suspended its own retaliatory plans.

The pain won’t just be felt by foreign steel and aluminum plants. The tariffs will likely drive up costs for American companies that use the metals, such as automakers, construction firms and beverage makers that use cans. The threats to the economy have rattled stock markets.

“Unilateral tariffs will raise prices, cost American jobs, and strain alliances,” Philip Luck and Evan Brown of the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in a report last month.

Trump is pressing tariffs from his first term

The latest tariffs are an amped-up replay from Trump’s first term.

In 2018, in an effort to protect American steelmakers from foreign competition, he imposed tariffs of 25% on foreign steel and 10% on aluminum, using a 1962 trade law to declare them a threat to U.S. national security.

The tariffs landed most heavily on American allies: Canada is the No. 1 supplier of foreign steel and accounts for more than half of aluminum exports to the United States. Mexico, Japan and South Korea are also major steel exporters to the U.S.

The president insists that steel imports are a threat to the very existence of the United States. “If we don’t have, as an example, steel, and lots of other things, we don’t have a military and frankly we won’t have — we just won’t have a country very long,” Trump said last week in his joint address to Congress.

His 2018 sanctions were gradually watered down.

Trump spared Canada and Mexico after they agreed to his demand for a revamped North American trade deal in 2020. For some U.S. trading partners, the tariffs were supplanted by import quotas. And the first Trump administration also allowed American companies to request exemptions from the tariffs if, for instance, they couldn’t find the steel they needed from domestic U.S. producers.

This time, Trump is closing those loopholes and raising the levy on aluminum to 25%.

He’s shown a willingness to go higher — as the apparently short-lived 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum suggest.

Trump was originally punching back at the government of Ontario for imposing a 25% surcharge on electricity sold to the United States, a move that was itself a response to Trump’s tariff threats. After Trump said he’d hit the Canadians with a 50% metals tax, Ontario suspended its planned electricity surcharge. In response, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said the U.S. would pull back on doubling the tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.

Expecting more of the same

Trump’s first-term steel and aluminum tariffs benefited American producers of the two metals, encouraging them to increase production. But the beneficiaries were relatively few: The U.S. steel industry, for instance, employs fewer than 150,000 people. Walmart alone has 1.6 million employees in the United States.

Moreover, economists have found, the gains to the steel and aluminum industries were more than offset by the cost they imposed on “downstream’’ manufacturers that use steel and aluminum. In 2021, production at such companies dropped by nearly $3.5 billion because of the tariffs, canceling out the $2.3 billion uptick in production that year by aluminum producers and steelmakers, the U.S. International Trade Commission found in 2023.

This time, “there is no particular reason to think that the economics won’t be more of the same: small gains for the U.S. steel and aluminum producers and employees, but larger overall losses for the rest of U..S manufacturing,’’ said Christine McDaniel, research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

Taken by themselves, the metals tariffs are unlikely to do much damage to the nearly $30 trillion U.S. economy. “Steel and aluminum – they’re just a drop in the ocean,’’ said Satyam Panday, chief U.S. and Canada economist at S&P Global Ratings.

But Trump isn’t just hitting steel and aluminum. He’s slapped 20% tariffs on all Chinese imports. He’s set to hammer all Canadian and Mexican products with 25% taxes next month, while limiting the tariff on Canadian energy to 10% – moves he has twice postponed with 30-day reprieves. And he has an ambitious and complicated plan to impose “reciprocal tariffs,’’ raising U.S. import taxes to match those of countries that impose higher levies on American products.

The scope and unpredictability of Trump’s tariff agenda threatens to rekindle inflation and to slow growth by discouraging companies from making investments until the trade tensions have eased. “If you’re an executive in the board room, are you really going to tell your board it’s the time to expand that assembly line?” said John Murphy, senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

US steelmakers raise prices

U.S. steelmakers can step up production to offset lost imports. They can also raise prices – and have already started, putting U.S. companies that use American steel at a disadvantage to competitors who get theirs elsewhere.

U.S. steel was priced at $854 per metric ton as of Feb. 24, considerably higher than the average world export price of $488, according to Steel Benchmarker.

Aluminum is a different story. The United States has just four aluminum smelters and only two of them were fully operating last year. Increasing U.S. smelter production would require “enough power for a small city,” S&P Global said in a report last week.

Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs are also certain to draw retaliatory taxes. Canada’s are expected to be announced Wednesday.

Contending with angry Canadians

Critics say Trump’s metals tariffs are hitting the wrong target.

China is widely seen as a source of the world steel industry’s problems. Chinese overproduction, heavily subsidized by Beijing, has flooded the world with steel and kept prices low, hurting steelmakers in the United States and elsewhere.

But the U.S. already uses trade barriers to keep out most Chinese steel. China accounted for less than 2% of U.S. steel imports last year, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute. “Instead of focusing on the real issue — China’s market-distorting policies — the United States risks entangling itself in tariff disputes with its closest allies,’’ wrote Luck and Brown at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Meanwhile, companies that use steel are already feeling the pain.

Steelport Knife Co. in Portland, Oregon, uses U.S. steel in its knives for home cooks and professional chefs. Last month, its American steel supplier, anticipating Trump’s tariffs, raised its price by 10%.

CEO Ron Khormaei says Steelport’s Japanese and German competitors are benefiting. “It’s cheaper for them,’’ he said. Khormaei says his small company — it has 12 employees — will lose business if it raises prices. So he’s doing everything he can to cut costs — keeping inventories tight, for example, and limiting travel to trade shows.

And he’s facing another problem. “Canadians are mad at us,’’ he said.

Khormaei said that one of his Canadian customers just cancelled an order by email: “Thank you. We love your product. We are not buying.’’

Paul Wiseman And Josh Boak, The Associated Press




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VICTORIA — British Columbia’s Energy Ministry says the United States has paused negotiations with Canada on the wide-reaching Columbia River Treaty that regulates everything from flood control and power generation to water supply and salmon restoration in the region.

The ministry says in a news release that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration “is conducting a broad review of its international engagement.”

The two countries reached an in-principle deal on a new version of the decades-old treaty last July, and while officials from both countries pushed for its finalization before Trump took office in January, the treaty’s fate remains unsettled.

The Columbia River’s headwaters are in British Columbia before it flows down into the states of Washington and Oregon.

The stoppage in talks comes amid trade tensions between Canada and the United States, and the Globe and Mail newspaper reported that Trump called the treaty unfair to the United States in a call with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in February.

B.C. Energy Minister Adrian Dix says he will be hosting a virtual information session to update residents about the status of treaty talks on March 25 “in light of new developments from the U.S.”

The ministry also says it will schedule in-person community meetings that were originally planned for earlier this year “once there is more clarity about next steps on the path to modernizing the treaty.”

The original treaty was signed in 1961 after a flood in 1948 devastated communities in the region, and B.C. First Nations have been calling for the new treaty to support restoration of salmon runs that have been blocked by dams in the United States.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 11, 2025.

The Canadian Press

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is canceling studies about ways to improve vaccine trust and access, a move that comes in the midst of a large measles outbreak fueled by unvaccinated children.

Researchers with grants from the National Institutes of Health to study why some people have questions or fears about vaccines and how to help those who want to be vaccinated overcome barriers are getting letters canceling their projects.

The step — first reported by The Washington Post, which cited dozens of expected cancellations — is highly unusual, as entire swaths of research typically aren’t ended mid-stream.

“It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research activities that focuses gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment,” say NIH letters sent to two researchers with different grants.

“It’s really concerning,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who viewed and read the content aloud, noting its claim that the research doesn’t benefit people or improve quality of life.

“That’s inaccurate. Vaccines clearly save lives, there’s no question about the science of that,” O’Leary said. Better understanding what parents want to learn from their pediatrician – or adults’ questions about their own shots — is “really about improving care and not just necessarily about just the vaccination rates.”

“You can’t say you’re for vaccine safety and not study how people think about vaccines,” added Dr. Georges Benjamin of the American Public Health Association.

Some of the canceled grants are a type that help fund the salaries of promising young researchers, whose careers may be threatened, O’Leary said.

It’s the latest move against vaccines since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became the nation’s health secretary, directing the agency that oversees the NIH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration. Kennedy has long criticized vaccines and since taking the new post has vowed to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule — shots that prevent measles, polio and other dangerous diseases — and CDC and FDA meetings of independent vaccine advisers have been postponed or canceled.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Lauran Neergaard, The Associated Press

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President Donald Trump has nominated a cybersecurity executive to lead the agency that works to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure, one that has faced Republican criticism in recent years over its involvement in elections.

Sean Plankey, who retired from the U.S. Coast Guard in 2023, was nominated Tuesday to lead the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA. He worked in the first Trump administration as a director for cyber policy at the National Security Council and then as a principal deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy.

CISA was formed in 2018 during the first Trump administration and is charged with protecting the nation’s sensitive infrastructure, including dams, nuclear power plants and voting systems. Though it’s under the Department of Homeland Security, CISA is a separate agency with its own Senate-confirmed director.

CISA’s first director, Chris Krebs, was fired by Trump after he highlighted a statement issued by a group of election officials that called the 2020 election the “ most secure in American history.” At the time, Trump was contesting his loss to Democrat Joe Biden and promoting false claims of widespread fraud.

The agency under both the Trump and Biden administrations has received praise from many state and local election officials. But some Republicans remain angry over its efforts to counter misinformation about the 2020 presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump’s new homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said during her January Senate confirmation hearing that CISA had strayed “far off mission” and she pledged to work with senators “should you wish to rein them in.”

CISA officials have said they were never engaged in censorship and only worked with states in 2020 to help them notify social media companies about misinformation spreading on their platforms. They said the agency did not instruct or try to coerce those companies to act.

During the 2024 election, CISA and other federal agencies alerted the public to various foreign misinformation campaigns, including three fake videos linked to Russia purporting to show election misconduct in battleground states.

Under the new Trump administration, CISA officials have launched a review of the agency’s work related to elections and placed more than a dozen agency employees who had worked on elections on administrative leave. Recently, the agency announced plans to cut about $10 million in annual funding from two cybersecurity initiatives, including one dedicated to helping state and local election officials.

In a letter released Tuesday by the National Association of Secretaries of State, Noem told state election officials that existing programs will allow them to access help CISA has traditionally provided. That includes security assessments of potential cyber threats and physical attacks, and how to plan for specific scenarios their offices might encounter.

The group’s bipartisan executive board had urged Noem to continue the agency’s services to state and local election officials.

Christina A. Cassidy, The Associated Press

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OTTAWA — The federal Liberals and the Conservatives are running neck-and-neck in voter support, a new Leger online poll suggests.

The poll of Canadians’ voting intentions has both parties sitting at 37 per cent.

It shows a drop of six points for the Conservatives and a seven per cent jump for Liberals since Feb. 24, while the NDP is down two per cent to 11 per cent.

Leger surveyed 1,548 Canadians between March 7 and March 10 — which means the poll wrapped up just after Liberals picked Mark Carney as the new party leader and prime minister-designate.

Because the poll was conducted online, it can’t be assigned a margin of error.

The Liberals have rebounded in the polls after lagging behind the Conservatives for nearly two years.

But Canadians are still hungry for change — the poll suggests more than half of all Canadians, 53 per cent, want a change of government in the next election.

Andrew Enns, Leger executive vice-president for central Canada, said the movement in voting intentions and the “cross-current of issues that Canadians are grappling with” are unprecedented.

He said U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats to make Canada the 51st state have captured the attention of Canadians.

“It’s triggered a lot of emotions, anger, frustration, disappointment, shock, and so that, I believe, is having an impact on changing perceptions because of this change in U.S. relations,” he said. “It’s changed a bit in terms of what we’re asking of our political leadership now in the country.”

The emergence of Carney, a former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, has given Canadians a new political option to evaluate.

“Obviously, given the economic situation, he’s an interesting character,” Enns said.

At the same time, he said, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s departure has “also loosened up some voting tendencies that we had seen locked in for quite a period of time.”

The Conservatives also have been thrown off their message track, Enns said. Carney’s promise to scrap consumer carbon pricing has made Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s “axe the tax” mantra seem less relevant to many.

Enns predicted that as Canada heads into an election, which could be called within days, there will be more swings in voting tendencies.

The polling industry’s professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 11, 2024.

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press

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NEW YORK (AP) — The White House complained Tuesday that Columbia University is refusing to help federal agents find people being sought as part of the government’s effort to deport participants in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, as the administration continued to punish the school by yanking federal research dollars.

Immigration enforcement agents on Saturday arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. resident and Palestinian activist who played a prominent part in protests at Columbia last year. He is now facing possible deportation.

President Donald Trump has vowed additional arrests. In a briefing with reporters in Washington, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said federal authorities have been “using intelligence” to identify other people involved in campus demonstrations critical of Israel that the administration considered to be antisemitic and “pro-Hamas.”

She said Columbia had been given names and was refusing to help the Department of Homeland Security “to identify those individuals on campus.”

“As the president said very strongly in his statement yesterday, he is not going to tolerate that,” Leavitt said.

A Columbia spokesperson didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.

Last week, the Trump administration announced it was pulling $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia, accusing the school of failing to stop antisemitism on campus. As part of those cuts, the National Institutes of Health late Monday it was cutting more than $250 million in funding, which included more than 400 grants.

X. Edward Guo, director of Columbia’s Bone Bioengineering Laboratory, posted a screenshot on X of an email he received notifying him that one of his NIH awards had been canceled. “We understand this may be shocking news,” the email reads.

The university was wracked last spring by large demonstrations by students calling for an end to Israeli military action in Gaza and a recognition of Palestinians’ human rights and territorial claims. The university ultimately called in police to dismantle a protest encampment and end a student takeover of an administration building.

Khalil, 30, had been a spokesperson for the protesters. He hasn’t been charged with any crimes, but Leavitt said the administration had moved to deport him under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the secretary of state the power to deport a non-citizen if the government “has reasonable ground to believe” the person’s presence could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

As of Tuesday, Khalil was being held at an immigration detention center in Louisiana.

Civil rights groups and Khalil’s attorneys say the government is unconstitutionally using its immigration-control powers to stop him from speaking out. A federal judge set a hearing for Wednesday and ordered the government not to deport him in the meantime.

Trump, a Republican, has suggested that some protesters support Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and abducting 251. Israel responded with bombardment and other military offensives that have left over 48,000 Palestinians dead in Hamas-ruled Gaza. Israel says more than 17,000 were militants.

Trump heralded Khalil’s arrest as the first “of many to come,” vowing on social media to deport students the president described as engaging in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”

Immigration agents also tried to arrest another international student at Columbia, but they weren’t allowed into an apartment where she was, according to a union representing the student.

Khalil, who finished his requirements for a Columbia master’s degree in December, and protest leaders have said they are anti-war, not antisemitic. They note that some Jewish students and groups have joined the demonstrations. A Columbia disciplinary body recently told Khalil it was investigating whether he violated a new harassment policy by calling a school official “genocidal.”

Leavitt didn’t detail specific wrongdoing by Khalil. But she said he had organized protests that disrupted classes, harassed Jewish students and “distributed pro-Hamas propaganda, fliers with the logo of Hamas.”

Born in Syria, Khalil is a grandson of Palestinians who were forced to leave their homeland, his lawyers said in a legal filing. It didn’t address his citizenship but said his relatives have been displaced anew amid Syria’s civil war and are now in other countries.

Khalil is married to a U.S. citizen, who is expecting their first child.

“For everyone reading this, I urge you to see Mahmoud through my eyes as a loving husband and the future father to our baby,” his wife, who has not been publicly identified, wrote in a statement provided by his lawyers. “I need your help to bring Mahmoud home, so he is here beside me, holding my hand in the delivery room as we welcome our first child into this world.”

The Associated Press

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British Columbia’s health minister says “now is the time” for American doctors and nurses to move to the province as it fast tracks recognition of their credentials during an escalating trade war between Canada and the United States.

Josie Osborne says the “chaos” happening south of the border is an opportunity for B.C. to attract skilled health-care workers interested in moving to Canada.

She says the province is working with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC on a direct process to enable U.S.-trained doctors to become fully licensed in B.C. without the need for further assessment, examination or training.

A statement from Osborne’s ministry says the changes are expected in the next few months, following consultations on proposed bylaw changes.

The province is similarly working with the BC College of Nurses and Midwives to make it faster and easier for American registered nurses to work in B.C.

Osborne says B.C. is also ramping up its efforts to recruit the U.S. health workers, including a targeted campaign in Washington, Oregon and California this spring.

“Whether it’s because their federal government is withdrawing from the World Health Organization, cutting public services or attacking reproductive rights, health professionals in the U.S. have a good reason to be alarmed,” she said Tuesday.

“This provides an opportunity for B.C. to send a clear message to doctors and nurses who are working in the U.S. Now is the time to come to British Columbia. We will welcome you to our beautiful province where together, we can strengthen public health care … and build healthy communities,” Osborne told a news conference.

There are 1,001 new family doctors in B.C. since the launch of the current physician payment model in 2023, and the number of nurse practitioners has almost tripled since 2018, including 128 new nurse practitioners registered last year.

The province says about 675,000 people have been matched with a family doctor or nurse practitioner since the launch of its primary care strategy in 2018, including a record number of 250,000 people attached to a primary care provider last year.

About 400,000 B.C. residents are still waiting to be matched with a family doctor through the province’s Health Connect Registry, Osborne said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 11, 2025.

Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he would double his planned tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25% to 50% for Canada, a retaliation that prompted the provincial government of Ontario to suspend its planned surcharges on electricity sold to the United States.

Tuesday’s escalation and retreat in the ongoing trade war between the United States and Canada only compounded the rising sense of uncertainty in terms of how Trump’s tariff hikes affect the economies of both countries. His spate of tax increases on imports and plans for more have roiled the stock market and stirred up recession risks.

Trump said on social media that the increase of the tariffs set to take effect on Wednesday is a response to the 25% price hike that Ontario put on electricity sold to the United States.

“I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to add an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Tuesday afternoon that U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called him and Ford agreed to remove the surcharge. He said he was confident that the U.S. president would also stand down on his own plans for 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.

“He has to bounce it off the president but I’m pretty confident he will pull back,” Ford said on Trump’s steel and aluminum tariff threat. “By no means are we just going to roll over. What we are going to do is have a constructive conversation.”

Trump told reporters that he’s looking at returning the steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada to 25% and would “probably” do so.

Asked if the United States could face a recession, Trump said, “I don’t see it.”

After a brutal stock market selloff on Monday and further jitters Tuesday, Trump faces increased pressure to show he has a solid plan to grow the economy. So far the president is doubling down on tariffs and can point to Tuesday’s drama as evidence that taxes on imports are a valuable negotiating tool, even if they can generate turmoil in the stock market.

Trump suggested Tuesday that tariffs were critical for changing the U.S. economy, regardless of stock market gyrations.

The U.S. president has given a variety of explanations for his antagonism of Canada. He has said that his separate 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada, some of which are suspended for a month, are about fentanyl smuggling and voicing objections to Canada putting high taxes on dairy imports that penalize U.S. farmers. He also continued to call for Canada to become part of the United States as a solution, which has infuriated Canadian leaders.

“The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State,” Trump posted Tuesday. “This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear.”

Tensions between the United States and Canada

Incoming Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government will keep tariffs in place until Americans show respect and commit to free trade after Trump threatened historic financial devastation for his country.

Carney, who will be sworn in as Justin Trudeau’s replacement in coming days, said Trump’s latest tariffs are an attack on Canadian workers, families and businesses.

“My government will keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect and make credible, reliable commitments to free and fair trade,” Carney said in a statement.

Canadian officials are planning retaliatory tariffs in response to Trump’s specific steel and aluminum tariffs. Those are expected to be announced Wednesday.

Carney was referring to an initial $30 billion Canadian (US$21 billion) worth of retaliatory tariffs that have been applied on items like American orange juice, peanut butter, coffee, appliances, footwear, cosmetics, motorcycles and certain pulp and paper products.

Trump also has targeted Mexico with 25% tariffs because of his dissatisfaction over drug trafficking and illegal immigration, though he suspended the taxes on imports that are compliant with the 2020 USMCA trade pact for one month.

Asked if Mexico feared it could face the same 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum as Canada, President Claudia Sheinbaum, said “No, we are respectful.”

Trump was set to deliver a Tuesday afternoon address to the Business Roundtable, a trade association of CEOs that during the 2024 campaign he wooed with the promise of lower corporate tax rates for domestic manufacturers. But his tariffs on Canada, Mexico, China, with plans for more to possibly come on Europe, Brazil, South Korea, pharmaceutical drugs, copper, lumber and computer chips — would amount to a massive tax hike.

The stock market’s vote of no confidence over the past two weeks puts the president in a bind between his enthusiasm for taxing imports and his brand as a politician who understands business based on his own experiences in real estate, media and marketing.

Worries about a recession are growing

The investment bank Goldman Sachs revised down its growth forecast for this year to 1.7% from 2.2% previously. It modestly increased its recession probability to 20% “because the White House has the option to pull back policy changes if downside risks begin to look more serious.”

Trump has tried to assure the public that his tariffs would cause a bit of a “transition” to the economy, with the taxes prodding more companies to begin the years-long process of relocating factories to the United States to avoid the tariffs. But he set off alarms in an interview broadcast on Sunday in which he didn’t rule out a possible recession.

The stock market slide continues

The promise of great things ahead did not eliminate anxiety, with the S&P 500 stock index tumbling 2.7% on Monday in an unmistakable Trump slump that has erased the market gains that greeted his victory in November 2024. The S&P 500 index fell roughly 0.2% in Tuesday afternoon trading, paring earlier losses after Ontario backed down on electricity surcharges.

Trump has long relied on the stock market as an economic and political gauge to follow, only to look past it as he remains determined so far to impose tariffs. When he won the election last year, he proclaimed that he wanted his term to be considered to have started Nov. 6, 2024 on Election Day, rather than his Jan. 20, 2025 inauguration, so that he could be credited for post-election stock market gains.

Trump also repeatedly warned of an economic freefall if he lost the election.

“If I don’t win you will have a 1929 style depression. Enjoy it,” Trump said at an August rally in Pennsylvania.

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Associated Press writer Fabiola Sanchez contributed to this report from Mexico City. Gillies reported from Toronto.

Josh Boak, Rob Gillies And Michelle Price, The Associated Press







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