Trump says he will impose 50% tariff on copper
Canada exports billions of dollars in copper to U.S.
U.S. President Donald Trump said he will announce a 50 per cent tax on imported copper on Tuesday — adding to the growing list of punishing tariffs that are causing economic dislocation in Canada and around the world.
Trump said the tariffs are coming during a cabinet meeting at the White House.
"Today, we're doing copper," he said, after listing a number of other tariffs the U.S. has instituted. "I believe the tariff on copper, we're going to make it 50 per cent."
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Mark Carney said the government won't be commenting until Trump signs an executive order and more details are available.
The Trump administration announced a Section 232 investigation over the import of the metal in February.
Trump has already imposed Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos, which have been particularly damaging to the Canadian economy, leading to job losses and a drop in exports.
Those tariffs take their name from the section of a U.S. trade law that allows the president to impose levies on certain goods that are said to threaten "national security."
Trump relied on that section to impose tariffs on metals in his first term, which were only lifted on Canadian products after the last Liberal government brokered the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
Canada is a major exporter of copper to the U.S. — American data suggest it's the second-largest foreign supplier after Chile — and a 50 per cent tariff will make it more expensive for U.S. importers to bring in the metal.
According to federal data, Canada exported some $9.3 billion worth of copper and copper-based products in 2023 with a majority of that — 52 per cent — going to the U.S. China and Japan followed, with 17 and 12 per cent of Canadian exports respectively.
Most of Canada's copper exports come from B.C. but Teck Resources, the Vancouver-based metals giant that owns a major mine in the province, said it should be able to avoid Trump's threatened tariffs.
"Teck does not currently sell copper concentrate or finished copper into the U.S. and would therefore be unaffected," a spokesperson for the company said.
According to a B.C. government fact sheet released earlier this year, none of the copper produced in the province goes to the U.S., with a focus instead on Asia.
But these tariffs could lead to some potentially "very concerning" developments for copper operations in Quebec, said Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada.
Mining company Glencore owns the decades-old Horne Smelter and the Canadian Copper Refinery in that province, businesses that employ hundreds of people and process tens of thousands of tonnes of the metal every year.
Given how integrated the North American industry is, Gratton says the tariffs "may inadvertently help Chinese refiners" who produce copper at a lower cost.
"This will hurt copper producers who sell concentrate to Canada, and to manufacturers who purchase Canadian refined copper products," he said.
Gratton said the industry will be monitoring the issue closely, to learn if exceptions for Canada are being discussed.
Trump and Carney are locked in negotiations to come to some sort of trade resolution by July 21.
The president is pursuing a three-pronged approach to tariffs as he tries to radically reshape the American economy.
In addition to the Section 232 tariffs, Trump has imposed a 25 per cent tariff on all non-CUSMA compliant goods coming from Canada, with a lower rate on energy and potash, as part of a border-related tariffs regime.
Trump has said those tariffs are designed to punish Canada for not doing enough to crack down on the fentanyl drug trade, even as U.S. data shows relatively little of that deadly drug crosses the northern border.
Canada has so far been spared Trump's so-called "retaliatory" tariffs, which were paused in part for some countries after the April stock market crash.
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