The movement of the Ontario Doug Ford Prime Minister to impose a surcharge for electricity that flows south of the border seems to have attracted the attention of US President Donald Trump.
Trump changed his sight in the new tax in a night stand on his real social platform.
“Despite the fact that Canada is charging the United States from 250% to 390% of tariffs in many of our agricultural products, Ontario has just announced a 25% surcharge in” electricity “, of all things, and it is not even allowed to do that,” he wrote.
It is not entirely clear to what Trump referred to in saying that Ontario “does not even allow that.”
“Because our rates are reciprocal, we will recover it all on April 2. Canada is a tariff abuser, and it has always been, but the United States will no longer be subsidizing Canada. We do not need its cars, we do not need its wood, it is not its energy, and very soon it will discover it,” he continued.
Trump launched a commercial war against Canada shortly after assuming office, despite a long economic, cultural and military alliance among neighboring nations. His administration has said that he will impose 25 percent tariffs to most Canadian goods and 10 percent energy.
In an intensely negative reaction of the stock market, Trump temporarily stopped the implementation of tariffs on “compatible” Canadian exports with the terms of the Canadá-Usexico (Cusma) agreement until April 2.
The Trump administration policy aimed at Canadian goods contravenes Cusma, a free trade agreement that Trump himself headed and a few years ago called “the best and most important commercial agreement ever made by the United States.” It also occurs when Trump and some of its closest assistants make repeated obertures threaten the territorial sovereignty of Canada.
Both ontarium and the federal government have said they will advance with retaliation measures until the tariffs are completely out of the table.
On Monday, Ford announced that his government would implement a 25 percent surcharge in electricity generated by Ontario bought by New York, Michigan and Minnesota.
Ontario provides energy to approximately 1.5 million customers in those border states of the north, which sometimes also resaes that electricity to even more states, mainly in the northeast.
The province estimates that the tax will generate up to $ 400,000 per day, depending on the season. That money will be used to reduce energy invoices for taxpayers in Ontario, according to the Ministry of Energy.
Ford also repeated his threat of completely cutting the Ontario electricity flow to the United States, a process that would probably require the province to significantly reduce its own energy generation.
In addition to the surcharge, Ontario has drawn the American alcohol of the LCBO shelves and has prohibited US companies with government acquisition contracts, while the Federal Government has imposed an initial round of retaliation rates on goods in the United States worth $ 30 billion.
Lorenda Reddekopp of CBC breaks down how Doug Ford’s plan to impose an electricity tax could affect the United States
