Trump says U.S. tariffs on Canada will proceed and here’s his full statement

U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed today that U.S. tariffs will be proceeding against Canada and they could start as early as next week. 

Trump responded to a reporter’s question about tariffs during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron earlier today. The reporter had asked Trump if the tariffs would proceed or whether Mexico and Canada had “done enough on the border” to stop them from taking effect.

The announcement comes in the wake of the Bank of Canada warning that U.S. tariffs could have a “severe” impact on Canada’s economy.

Trump’s full statement on U.S. tariffs on Canada

We’re on time with the tariffs, and it seems like that’s moving along very rapidly. We’ve been mistreated very badly by many countries, not just Canada and Mexico. We’ve been taken advantage of.

We were led by, in some cases, fools, because anybody that would sign documents like they signed where they were able to take advantage of the American people. Like has happened over the last long period of time, except for a little four year period that took place four years ago.

But anybody that would agree to allow this to happen to our country should be ashamed of themselves. Now. The tariffs are going forward, on time, on schedule. 

This is an abuse that took place for many, many years, and I’m not even blaming the other countries that did this. I blame our leadership for allowing it to happen. You know, who can blame them if they made these great deals with the United States?

They took advantage of the United States, on manufacturing, on just about everything, every aspect that you can imagine, they took advantage of.

I look at some of these agreements. I’d read them at night, and I say, “who would ever sign a thing like this?” So the tariffs will go forward. We’re going to make up a lot of territory. All we want is reciprocal. We want reciprocity. We want to have the same so if somebody charges us, we charge them. It’s very simple,.

Bbut it’ll be very good for our country. Our country will be extremely liquid and rich again. Plus we’re doing other things as you know, we’re finding tremendous waste, fraud and abuse.