Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Sun­day that Amer­i­cans could feel “some pain” from the emerg­ing trade war trig­gered by his tar­iffs against Cana­da, Mex­i­co and Chi­na, and claimed that Cana­da would “cease to ex­ist” with­out its trade sur­plus with the Unit­ed States.

The trade penal­ties that Trump signed Sat­ur­day at his Flori­da re­sort caused a mix of pan­ic, anger and un­cer­tain­ty, and threat­ened to rup­ture a decades-old part­ner­ship on trade in North Amer­i­ca while fur­ther strain­ing re­la­tions with Chi­na.

“Cana­di­ans are per­plexed,” said the coun­try’s U.S. am­bas­sador, Kirsten Hill­man. “We view our­selves as your neigh­bour, your clos­est friend, your al­ly.”

By fol­low­ing through on a cam­paign pledge, Trump may al­so have si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly bro­ken his promise to vot­ers in last year’s elec­tion that his ad­min­is­tra­tion could quick­ly re­duce in­fla­tion. That means the same frus­tra­tion he is fac­ing from oth­er na­tions might al­so spread do­mes­ti­cal­ly to con­sumers and busi­ness­es.

“WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!),” Trump said in a so­cial me­dia post. “BUT WE WILL MAKE AMER­I­CA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.”

His ad­min­is­tra­tion has not said how high that price could be or what im­prove­ments would need to be seen in stop­ping il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion and the smug­gling of fen­tanyl to mer­it the re­moval of the tar­iffs that Trump im­posed un­der the le­gal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of an eco­nom­ic emer­gency. The tar­iffs are set to launch Tues­day.

“If prices go up, it’s be­cause of oth­er peo­ple’s re­ac­tions to Amer­i­ca’s laws,” his home­land sec­re­tary, Kristi Noem, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In his Truth So­cial post, Trump took par­tic­u­lar aim at Cana­da, which re­spond­ed with re­tal­ia­to­ry mea­sures. Trump is plac­ing a 25% tar­iff on Cana­di­an goods, with a 10% tax on oil, nat­ur­al gas and elec­tric­i­ty. Cana­da is im­pos­ing 25% tar­iffs on more than $155 bil­lion on U.S. prod­ucts, in­clud­ing al­co­hol and fruit.

Trump railed against Cana­da’s trade sur­plus with the Unit­ed States: “We don’t need any­thing they have. We have un­lim­it­ed En­er­gy, should make our own Cars, and have more Lum­ber than we can ever use.”

De­spite Trump’s claim that the U.S does not need Cana­da, one-quar­ter of the oil that the Amer­i­ca con­sumes per day is from its al­ly to the north.

Trump con­tend­ed that with­out that sur­plus, “Cana­da ceas­es to ex­ist as a vi­able Coun­try. Harsh but true! There­fore, Cana­da should be­come our Cher­ished 51st State. Much low­er tax­es, and far bet­ter mil­i­tary pro­tec­tion for the peo­ple of Cana­da — AND NO TAR­IFFS!”

Cana­da’s am­bas­sador to Wash­ing­ton has said the U.S. had a $75 bil­lion trade deficit with Cana­da last year, but not­ed that one-third of what Cana­da sells in­to the U.S. is en­er­gy ex­ports and that there is a deficit when oil prices are high. About 60% of U.S. crude oil im­ports are from Cana­da.

Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau is en­cour­ag­ing Cana­di­ans to buy more Cana­di­an goods, and says Trump’s moves will on­ly cause pain across North Amer­i­ca. More than 75% of Cana­da’s ex­ports go to the U.S. Cana­da will first tar­get al­co­hol, cos­met­ics and pa­per prod­ucts; a sec­ond round lat­er will in­clude pas­sen­ger ve­hi­cles, trucks, steel and alu­minum prod­ucts, cer­tain fruits and veg­eta­bles, beef, pork, di­ary prod­ucts and more.

Cana­da is the largest ex­port mar­ket for 36 states and Mex­i­co is the largest trad­ing part­ner of the U.S.

Cana­di­ans “just don’t un­der­stand where this is com­ing from ... and prob­a­bly there’s a lit­tle bit of hurt, right?” Hill­man, the am­bas­sador, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sun­day.

Mex­i­co’s pres­i­dent, Clau­dia Shein­baum, al­so an­nounced new tar­iffs and sug­gest­ed the U.S. should do more with­in its own bor­ders to ad­dress drug ad­dic­tion. She and Trudeau spoke af­ter Trump’s an­nounce­ment and agreed “to en­hance the strong bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions” be­tween Cana­da and Mex­i­co, ac­cord­ing to the prime min­is­ter’s of­fice.

The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment said it would take steps to de­fend its eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests and in­tends to file a law­suit with the World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion.

For Trump, the open ques­tion is whether in­fla­tion could be a po­lit­i­cal pres­sure point that would cause him to back down. As a can­di­date, Trump re­peat­ed­ly ham­mered De­moc­rats over the in­fla­tion un­der Pres­i­dent Joe Biden that re­sult­ed from sup­ply chain is­sues dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s own spend­ing to spur the re­cov­ery and Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of Ukraine.

Trump said his pre­vi­ous four years as pres­i­dent had low in­fla­tion, so the pub­lic should ex­pect the same if he came back to the White House. But he al­so said specif­i­cal­ly that high­er in­fla­tion would stag­ger the U.S. as a na­tion, a po­si­tion from which he now ap­pears to be re­treat­ing with the tar­iffs.

“In­fla­tion is a dis­as­ter,” he said at a Philadel­phia cam­paign ral­ly. “It’s a coun­try-buster. It’s a to­tal coun­try-buster.”

Lar­ry Sum­mers, trea­sury sec­re­tary in the Clin­ton ad­min­is­tra­tion, said the tar­iffs were “a self-in­flict­ed wound to the Amer­i­can econ­o­my.”

“In­fla­tion might go up over the next nine months by as much ... as 1%, just at a mo­ment when we were try­ing to bring it down,” he told CNN’s “In­side Pol­i­tics.”

He added that “on the play­ground or in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, bul­ly­ing is not an en­dur­ing­ly win­ning strat­e­gy. And that’s what this is.” And the ul­ti­mate win­ner, Sum­mers sug­gest­ed, would be Chi­nese leader Xi Jin­ping be­cause “we’ve moved to dri­ve some of our clos­est al­lies in­to his arms” and “we’re le­git­i­mat­ing every­thing he’s do­ing by vi­o­lat­ing all the in­ter­na­tion­al norms that we set up.”

Out­side analy­ses make clear that Trump’s tar­iffs would hurt the vot­ers that he in­tend­ed to help, mean­ing that he might ul­ti­mate­ly need to find a res­o­lu­tion.

An analy­sis by the Bud­get Lab at Yale shows, if the tar­iffs were to con­tin­ue, an av­er­age U.S. house­hold would lose rough­ly $1,245 in in­come this year, in what would be the over­all equiv­a­lent of a more than $1.4 tril­lion tax in­crease over the next 10 years.

Gold­man Sachs, in a Sun­day an­a­lyst note, stressed that the tar­iffs go in­to ef­fect on Tues­day, which means they’re like­ly to pro­ceed “though a last-minute com­pro­mise can­not be com­plete­ly ruled out.”

The in­vest­ment bank con­clud­ed that be­cause of the pos­si­ble eco­nom­ic dam­age and pos­si­ble con­di­tions for re­moval that “we think it is more like­ly that the tar­iffs will be tem­po­rary but the out­look is un­clear.” —PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP)

_________

Sto­ry by JOSH BOAK | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Rob Gillies in Toron­to con­tributed to this re­port.