Trump's steel tariffs against Canada have been working just how he wants

For the hundreds of Canadian steelworkers who lost their jobs this year amid President Donald Trump’s trade war, talk of reaching a trade deal between Canada and the U.S. is coming too little, too late. 

For Trump, the effects — driving down imports, boosting the U.S. steel industry and winning concessions from Canada — seem to be getting him what he wants.

Initially faced with a 25 per cent tariff on exports to the U.S., which ballooned to 50 per cent in June, Canadian steel is desperate for a resolution. Trump imposed the levies under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, declaring steel imports a threat to national security and citing the need to protect American industry. His rationale was that curbing imports would reduce supply and ramp up prices, giving U.S. steel additional revenue to invest in strengthening domestic production.

About US$7.7 billion ($10 billion) in Canadian steel and iron was exported to the U.S. last year, with the American market worth 90 per cent of Canadian exports.

While Prime Minister Mark Carney’s team has been trying to get the steel tariffs lifted, he has lately tried managing expectations, publicly acknowledging that any trade deal will likely involve tariffs. 

Negotiating teams are staring down an Aug. 1 deadline, when Trump said he’ll be hitting Canada with yet more tariffs — on top of the steel, aluminum, lumber, copper, autos, and energy already being whacked, as well as any goods not exempted by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA).

With the deadline less than a week away, Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc was in Washington on Thursday for the latest trade discussions.

The talks, said one  Canadian government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, “ have been volatile.” 

So far, the Canadian steel industry has been one of the hardest hit by Trump’s tariffs, and it’s bracing for things to get uglier.

“By the end of May, before we even hit the 50 per cent tariffs, we saw a 30 per cent decline in production across the country,” said Catherine Cobden, president and CEO of the Canadian Steel Producers Association (CSPA). She doesn’t have the June numbers yet, but she expects it be “ much worse.”

Canadian producers can’t afford to absorb the 50 per cent tariff on six million tonnes of production, the amount that was destined for the U.S. market and is now subject to the levy, Cobden explains. 

While some analysts expected the U.S. market to keep buying heavily taxed Canadian steel to satisfy demand until domestic production increased to fill the gap, that’s not playing out in practice. At least not yet. 

“The customers on the other end aren’t always willing or able to pay, and they expect the steel companies to absorb that,” Cobden said.

“I talk to our members every day, and the situation is that the order books, for those shipments to the United States, are essentially drying up.”

So far, the downturn has led to more than 1,000 industry layoffs, said Cobden. She said she now fears that the problems will continue to mount as investment dries up and the industry shrinks.

In Trump’s first term in 2018, U.S. steel ramped up production after the president hit Canadian imports with tariffs of 25 per cent. It seems to be happening again.

According to the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), which supports tariffs, U.S. mills have been churning out steel at historic rates. In mid-June, weekly raw steel production hit a three-year peak, and the mill capacity utilization rate has averaged around 76.2 to 78 per cent. If it can be sustained near the 78 per cent mark, it will have exceeded last year’s 76.4 per cent, edging closer to the 80 per cent benchmark the Commerce Department wants.

Imports, meanwhile, have dropped 6.2 per cent compared to this time last year.

The 2018 tariffs also saw U.S. steelmakers invest over US$20 billion in modernization efforts, according to the Steel Manufacturers Association, and created 1,000 American jobs, according to the North American Industry Classification System, while saving others from disappearing.

Other studies, however, have questioned the long-term effectiveness of tariffs for job creation. So far this year, the results have been mixed, with a few plant closings and nearly 2,000 job losses mixed with some paused productions and a few summer ribbon-cuttings.

Other American industries are taking a hit, though. A lot of things are made with steel, so price increases impact loads of other industries, most notably automotive and housing. 

With steel-related input prices rising, the average American car price is expected to jump by nearly US$2,000. Housing construction is set to drop by four per cent, according to the National Association of Home Builders. 

Some analysts question the logic of disrupting supply lines and causing trade uncertainty in a bid to ramp up domestic production. Andrew Hale, a senior policy analyst at Heritage Foundation, acknowledges that the U.S. steel industry needs to modernize, but he says tariffs won’t help solve the underlying problems. 

“We have horrific regulations and zoning laws,” he says. “All sorts of things prohibit us from building new blast furnaces for the production of refined steel.”

“There’s so much red tape,” he adds, noting that it’s impossible to quickly rejig supply lines, as Trump has suggested.

Last week, Carney introduced new protections against offshore steel importers, with tariffs on even free-trade partners that export steel to Canada over a set quota, and a 25 per cent tax on any steel from any country – except the U.S. – that was originally melted and poured in China. 

These measures offer some help to the domestic industry, said the CSPA’s Cobden. They’re also a signal to Washington, which has long complained that Canada is a back door to the U.S. market for steel from China. 

But Cobden thinks Canada needs to be ready to hit the U.S. with tariffs, too, if there’s no deal before Aug. 1. Still, she’s optimistic that this war can’t last forever.

“Over time, one has to believe (the U.S.) is going to have to start doing steel trade with somebody. And our hope is it will be Canadian steel companies,” she says.

It’s time to build big, build bold, and build the strongest economy in the G7 — using Canadian steel. pic.twitter.com/O8YHsLZa4l

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) July 20, 2025

Hale, at the Heritage Foundation, agrees, pointing to the level of integration between the countries and the shortfall in U.S. production.  

“We created this whole NAFTA, now USMCA, trade area, and the whole auto industry and other industries were built around that to have this, effectively, single market,” he says.

Trump has already pushed back tariff deadlines this year. In April, after he announced sweeping “Liberation Day” global tariffs, the U.S. bond market collapsed and the S&P 500 plummeted to its lowest level since the pandemic . U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed for a 90-day tariff pause.

Markets are back to historic highs, but Hale says to watch for signs of market volatility again heading into next week. “If you’re going to lift the pause and implement these tariffs and maintain them, then the same thing could happen again,” he said.

National Post

tmoran@postmedia.com

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