Unified on Trump and tariffs, Canada’s premiers differ on next steps

Organizers remove the flags of Canada’s provinces and territories at the conclusion of a three-day meeting of the premiers in Huntsville, Canada on Wednesday, July 18, 2025. A three-day meeting in response to President Donald Trump’s looming tariff threat underscored differences between the leaders of Canada’s provinces and territories. (Ian Austen/The New York Times)

By Ian Austen

The leaders of Canada’s provinces and territories spoke as one during a three-day meeting when it came to condemning President Donald Trump’s annexation threats and trade war against the country.

But when it came to how Canada should respond and deal with the resulting economic turmoil, their patriotic unity swiftly dissipated into the regional rifts that have long divided the country.

Even after meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday, the 13 premiers still had conflicting views about further trade retaliation against the United States if Trump goes ahead on Aug. 1 and imposes 35% tariffs on Canadian exports.

Even without a single project being announced, divisions have formed among provinces around Carney’s plan to offset economic losses from reduced trade with the United States by rapidly building major infrastructure projects like oil pipelines.

Still, as the meeting wrapped up Wednesday, Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario and the host, boasted about the unity among the political leaders in the face of Trump’s potentially devastating tariffs. He called it “a united team Canada approach.”

Ford repeatedly pushed for retaliation if Trump follows through on his threat or if Canada is unable to reach a deal with the United States by Aug. 1 to eliminate the tariffs the United States has already applied on Canada.

“There’s one thing President Trump understands is strength,” Ford told reporters Tuesday. “He will roll over us like a cement roller if you show an ounce of weakness.”

Two industries hardest hit by Trump’s current tariffs, automaking and steel production, are wholly or largely based in Ford’s province of Ontario, which perhaps fuels his desire to strike back.

But several other premiers said that they did not share Ford’s enthusiasm for escalating the trade battle.

Scott Moe, the premier of Saskatchewan, complained that current Canadian tariffs on U.S. steel, imposed in response to Trump’s actions, were already raising the cost of equipment used by his province’s grain farmers.

“If tariffs imposed by the president of the United States have a financial impact on American families and American businesses, by extension countertariffs would have the same negative impact on Saskatchewan families,” he said Wednesday.

He stressed that all Canadians would feel the pain of any retaliatory tariffs.

Much of the meeting focused on Carney’s promises to make Canada an “energy superpower” and to quickly build large infrastructure projects. These could include oil and gas pipelines, nuclear power plants, mines, expanded power grids, ports, roads and railways as part of a plan to strengthen Canada’s domestic economy and diversify trade away from the United States.

With unusual speed and the support of the Conservative Party, Carney, the Liberal Party leader, passed a law to fast-track approvals of large projects. Ford passed a similar law in Ontario. Indigenous groups have gone to court challenging both laws as a violation of their land rights.

Environmentalists have also raised concerns about rushing major development.

But on the second day of the premiers’ meeting, Ford, Moe and Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, signed an accord that they said would bring new oil pipelines to the Pacific coast of Canada and to Ontario.

The potential value of their agreement, however, was unclear given that neither British Columbia, the province on the Pacific, nor Manitoba, which sits between Saskatchewan and Ontario, is party to the deal.

David Eby, the premier of British Columbia, noted that the federal government under Justin Trudeau, the former prime minister, had purchased and expanded an oil pipeline from Alberta to a port near Vancouver.

Now, he said, it is struggling to find a private buyer for it. Eby also said that no pipeline or energy company had shown any interest in building another oil pipeline to the coast.

“For the pipeline project that Premier Smith is a great enthusiast of, a heavy oil pipeline project, there is no project, no proponent, there’s no private-sector money,” Eby said during a news conference. “When Premier Smith crosses those obvious hurdles to get a project done, then let’s have those conversations.”

Wab Kinew, the premier of Manitoba, said Wednesday that it was too early to be announcing large projects, all of which would inevitably cross Indigenous peoples’ territories.

“The approach that we’re taking is we want the Indigenous nations onside first,” he said. “We’re doing all the legwork and consent building at the head of the process, and then we’ll take the covers off and do the press release.”