Canadians and Americans alike hate the tariffs that U.S.President Donald Trump slapped onto Canadian imports last month, a new poll shows.
Talks between the United States and its northern neighbor collapsed in August, prompting the U.S. president to impose tariffs on some Canadian imports. Canada responded with its own “dollar-for-dollar” levies, with the relationship between Ottawa and Washington, D.C., becoming increasingly frosty ever since.
According to a poll by POLITICO, 83 percent of Canadians say that Trump was wrong to hit their country with tariffs, compared with just 8 percent who thought the president had done the right thing.
Meanwhile, 56 percent of Americans said that Trump was wrong to impose the tariffs, compared to just 26 percent who thought it was the right move.
Thirty-three percent of American respondents even stated that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was right to impose reciprocal tariffs, compared to just 31 percent who said that he was wrong.
The poll was carried out by Public First, a firm based in the United Kingdom, and was conducted between September 13 and September 15. It involved 4,183 Canadian and American adults.
Trump has often criticized Carney’s leadership, previously labeling him as “ungrateful” and “nasty.”
Amid the trade war, Trump issued an executive order demanding that Lake Ontario be renamed “Lake America” while Canada has moved closer to the European Union - with Carney welcoming suggestions that his country could become the E.U.’s first associate member.
“If they do that, if I think it's at all a hostile act, I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe, on many things,” Trump said about the plan. “If it's a good intention, that's fine.”
As the trade war continues, most Canadians back matching the U.S.'s tariffs as opposed to making concessions to their southern neighbor. Fifty-seven percent of Canadians held that opinion in POLITICO’s poll, as opposed to the 24 percent who supported making concessions in order to encourage the U.S. to drop the tariffs.
The poll also found that Canadians acknowledged the value of trade with the United States, with 48 percent naming the U.S. as one of their country's most important trade relationships. Overall, 84 percent pointed to international trade as being important to the Canadian economy.
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal Wednesday, Carney did hint that some progress towards better trade relations with the United States had been made.
“There were a series of issues late in the negotiations that were red lines for us, that we couldn’t cross and didn’t cross. Some of those have been taken off the table,” Carney told the newspaper. “But one of the core principles here…is we’re not going to compromise our sovereignty. Our ability to pursue trade deals with other jurisdictions is very important to us.”
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