Mark Carney slams U.S. tariff levels

Tariffs are the story here — and the point Carney is making is pretty blunt. In a video address released on April 19, Canada’s prime minister said the U.S. has pushed tariffs up to levels “last seen during the Great Depression,” and that Canada’s old habit of leaning on the American market now looks less like an advantage and more like a vulnerability. This was not some abstract economics lecture. It was a warning about how the trading relationship underneath a huge part of Canada’s economy has changed. ### What did Carney actually say? He said the U.S. has “fundamentally changed its approach to trade,” and tied that change directly to higher tariffs and a more coercive style of economic policy. The bigger idea was that Canada can’t assume the old cross-border setup will just keep working if Washington now treats tariffs as a standing tool, not a temporary bargaining chip. ### Why invoke the Great Depression? Because that phrase does two jobs at once. It tells you the tariff levels are historically unusual, and it signals that Carney thinks this is not normal trade friction. He is putting today’s tariff regime in the category of system-level rupture — the kind January, where he said the old rules-based order is fading and middle powers need more strategic autonomy. ### Which U.S. tariffs is he talking about? The load-bearing example is metals. The Trump administration’s April 2 proclamation reworked Section 232 tariffs so that, starting April 6, many steel, aluminum, and copper products face duties on the full customs value of the import. For many core ers a lot for manufacturers shipping finished goods, not just raw metal. ### Why does “full customs value” matter so much? Because it changes the math. Think of a machine, appliance, or fabricated part with some steel or aluminum inside it. Under the older setup, the tariff bite could be limited to the metal portion. Under the new one, the duty can apply to the entire imported product. Basically, the tariff stops being a narrow metals tax and starts acting more like a broad penalty on downstream manufacturing. ### Why is Canada so exposed? Because Canada built a lot of its prosperity around deep integration with the U.S. market. Carney’s line about former strengths becoming weaknesses is really about concentration risk — if one buyer dominates your exports and suddenly turns trade access into leverage, your efficiency becomes dependence. That is why he paired the tariff criticism with talk about attracting new investment and diversifying trade. ### How is Ottawa responding? With money first, and strategy second. On May 4, Carney’s government rolled out C$1.5 billion in support for firms hit by the latest U.S. metals tariff changes. Canada also already has counter-tariffs in place on some U.S. goods, and the broader political push is to reduce reliance on a single partner before the scheduled July 2026 review of the North American trade pact. ### So what’s really at stake? The fight is not just over steel. It is over whether North American trade still runs on predictable rules or on repeated tariff threats. If Carney is right, then the real damage comes before any factory closes — businesses delay investment, supply chains get redesigned, and the cost of depending on the U.S. rises even if a formal trade deal survives. ### Bottom line Carney is trying to tell Canadians that the problem is bigger than one tariff schedule. The U.S. is treating trade barriers as a durable instrument of policy, and Canada now has to build around that fact.