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Leaders in Alberta’s energy sector say they aren’t panicking after Donald Trump threatened to slap a 25-per-cent tariff on Canadian goods, but they’re still urging Ottawa to take the United States president-elect’s threat as a wake-up call.
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“As Canadians, we need to be eyes-wide-open on the President-elect’s promise for across-the-board tariffs,” said Lisa Baiton, president and CEO of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
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“It is time to stop dithering around with domestic policy that kills our biggest GDP generators and job creators, like the emissions cap, and move with alacrity to support our most productive industries,” she said.
Trump said in a Monday social media post that he’ll issue an executive order as one of his first orders of business imposing a 25-per-cent tariff on all Canadian and Mexican products, adding that the levy will stay in place until both countries crack down on the cross-border flow of migrants and drugs into the U.S.
This ups the ante considerably from the 10-per-cent global tariff that Trump campaigned on.
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Trump vowed during the campaign to renegotiate America’s existing free-trade deal with Canada and Mexico, which is up for review in 2026.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said Monday evening that Trump’s concerns about vulnerabilities at the Canada-U.S. borders were “valid” and urged Ottawa to meet the president-elect halfway.
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“We are calling on the federal government to work with the incoming administration to resolve these issues immediately, thereby avoiding any unnecessary tariffs on Canadian exports to the U.S.,” Smith said in a post on X.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday that he’d agreed to a request from Smith and her fellow premiers to a first ministers’ meeting to talk trade strategy. The meeting will take place virtually on Wednesday afternoon.
Heather Exner-Pirot, head of energy studies at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said the tariff threat is a prime example of the dictum, “take Trump seriously but not literally.”
“Canadian crude oil is a very hard import for the U.S. to replace,” said Exner-Pirot. “Their refineries are optimized for our oil.”
Exner-Pirot added that any action seen as hurting Americans at the pump would be damaging for Trump in highly competitive swing states.
“The silver lining of this situation is that the American public has never been more aware of how much Canadian oil goes to the U.S.,” said Exner-Pirot.
Canada is the top supplier of petroleum to the U.S. accounting for 52 per cent of its gross oil imports in 2023, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
rmohamed@postmedia.com
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