Canada

OTTAWA — Canada is dropping its countertariffs on the American goods that are covered by the free -trade agreement between the two countries, amid the ongoing trade war with the United States, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday.

Carney made the announcement during a news conference Friday, following a virtual meeting of his cabinet, and the day after a discussion with U.S. President Donald Trump.

In a statement to CTV News on Friday, a White House official said the U.S. welcomes the move, calling it “long overdue.”

The official added they look forward to “continuing our discussions with Canada on the administration’s trade and national security concerns.”

Canada quietly admits what many suspected: Canada’s counter-tariffs hit CUSMA-exempt goods.

Today, Ottawa rolled them back—OJ, peanut butter, wine, etc.

If they were never allowed in the first place, why did Canadians pay higher prices for months?#cdnpoli #trade https://t.co/U8OE71uDbe

— The Food Professor (@FoodProfessor) August 22, 2025

As Premier Doug Ford rolled out $70 million to help steelworkers affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, he insisted “we aren’t going to kiss his backside.”

A feisty Ford also fired a salvo Wednesday at the head of Cleveland-Cliffs, the American parent company of Stelco, for endorsing Trump’s trade war against Canada.

“I love the workers, but their owner, I got a problem with that guy,” the premier said of Cleveland-Cliffs president and CEO Lourenco Goncalves.

Ford always knows the right thing to say.

Mexico and Canada, pushed into a three-nation trade deal by their powerful neighbor in between, have for decades viewed each other with a mix of disinterest and distrust.

Now, their leaders, driven by President Trump’s extensive new tariffs and threats to their countries’ sovereignty, are talking about ways to team up.

“It’s very much an all-hands-on-deck approach to ensure that we are kick-starting” the relationship, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Anita Anand, told reporters this month, alongside Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne.

Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke to his U.S. counterpart by phone Thursday — the first time the leaders have spoken since the two sides failed to reach a deal on a trade agreement earlier this month.

According to a short readout from the Prime Minister’s Office, Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump “discussed current trade challenges, opportunities and shared priorities” in what officials described as a “productive and wide-ranging conversation.”

The United States has placed sanctions on a Canadian judge and three other judges who sit on the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying they authorized ICC investigations into U.S. personnel in Afghanistan.

The U.S. State Department said in an Aug. 20 statement that judge Kimberly Prost was sanctioned after authorizing an ICC investigation into potential alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan since 2003. The Appeals Chamber of the ICC decided unanimously to authorize the investigation in March 2020.

Food inflation has returned as a problem for Canadian households. According to Statistics Canada, food prices rose 3.3% in July, outpacing overall inflation by 1.6 percentage points. Unlike past cycles, this spike cannot be blamed on volatile global markets. The cause lies much closer to home — in our own policy decisions.

Coffee prices surged 28.6%, confectionery 11.8%, and fresh fruit 3.9%, with grapes alone up nearly 30%. Since March 2025 — when Ottawa ended the GST holiday that had distorted winter data — food inflation has exceeded the overall CPI by an average of 1.4 points. A large part of this gap stems from the counter-tariffs imposed on essential imports, many of which lack viable domestic substitutes.