Cana­da Buys Ads In A Dozen States Against Trump’s Tar­iffs

Cana­da is run­ning a bill­board cam­paign in the Unit­ed States against Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s tar­iffs.

The Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment has pur­chased bill­boards across a dozen states and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., that car­ry the mes­sage: “Tar­iffs are a tax.” The cam­paign began after Trump in Feb­ru­ary threat­ened Cana­da and Mex­i­co with 25% tar­iffs.

Glob­al Affairs Cana­da spokesman John Bab­cock said that the bill­boards are part of an “edu­ca­tion­al cam­paign to inform Amer­i­cans” about the costs of tar­iffs, accord­ing to Michigan’s MLive.

“Tar­iffs are a tax on hard-work­ing Amer­i­cans in their dai­ly lives. They lead to increased costs on every­day essen­tials, includ­ing fuel and gro­ceries,” Bab­cock said in a state­ment.

Last month, Trump imposed sweep­ing 25% tar­iffs on Cana­di­an goods with excep­tions for those goods nego­ti­at­ed under the Unit­ed States-Mex­i­co-Cana­da Agree­ment. Cana­di­an ener­gy received a low­er 10% tar­iff.

Last week, Trump announced more tar­iffs on dozens of coun­tries in a spe­cial Rose Gar­den event billed by the White House as “Lib­er­a­tion Day.” The tar­iffs to be imple­ment­ed against each coun­try were cal­cu­lat­ed with a sim­ple for­mu­la of a country’s trade deficit divid­ed by its exports to the Unit­ed States. That num­ber was then divid­ed in half to arrive at the tar­iff rate that Trump would be imple­ment­ing.

“Tax­pay­ers have been ripped off for more than 50 years,” Trump said dur­ing the announce­ment. “But it is not going to hap­pen any­more.”

“[T]he Unit­ed States admin­is­tra­tion announced a series of unwar­rant­ed and unjus­ti­fied tar­iffs that will fun­da­men­tal­ly change the inter­na­tion­al trad­ing sys­tem. While some impor­tant ele­ments of the Cana­da U.S. trade rela­tion­ship have been pre­served, new tar­iffs on auto­mo­biles have now entered into force. These are on top of the pre­vi­ous­ly announced tar­iffs, includ­ing those on steel and alu­minum, which remain in place,” Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Mark Carney’s office said in a state­ment after the announce­ment of the “Lib­er­a­tion Day” tar­iff rates.

“The U.S. tar­iffs will do harm to Amer­i­can work­ers and busi­ness­es, but Cana­da will also be impact­ed, with every Cana­di­an feel­ing the effects. The Gov­ern­ment of Canada’s posi­tion has always been clear: we will fight these tar­iffs, pro­tect our work­ers, and build the strongest econ­o­my in the G7,” the state­ment con­tin­ued.