US President Donald Trump will be imposing an additional 25% to the current 25% tariff already implemented on steel and aluminum from Canada, set to take effect on Wednesday.
Yahoo Finance Washington Correspondent Ben Werschkul joins Market Domination with Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton to discuss these additional tariffs and how US makers of the materials are reacting.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.
We are tracking the fast-moving developments in the trade tensions between the US and Canada, just hours before President Trump's 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum go into effect, Ontario premier Doug Ford announcing he is suspending the surcharge on electricity exports. Yahoo finances Ben Workscoles here tracking all of the back of the and forth, heads are turning like a tennis match here, as we try to stay up to date with it, Ben. So what is the latest?
Yeah, the latest is is the big thing is what you said just about about the Ontario premier limiting the um the electricity surcharges for now. What's not in that statement that just came out a few minutes ago is any word on Trump's charge for these 50% tariffs. This is something he moved on this morning, he was he's long planned to do 25% tariffs on steel aluminum starting tomorrow. He upped that on Canada, which is the major importer of both of those products, for tomorrow morning to 50% this morning. And now we've had this back and forth with with the Ontario premier and the commerce secretary, but we don't officially have word yet on what's going to be the fate of those tariffs. Trump announced those tariffs based on this idea of an economic electricity emergency. So this would seem to take that away, but we don't know for certain yet. He would presumably have to sign a new kind of declaration of emergency to impose those. So, so he he could back away from those before this midnight deadline. Either way, the 25% deadline, the 25% tariffs are set to go into effect. Those are a different tariff authority, those are based on executive order he signed a few weeks ago, that unless he changes his mind there would all would go into effect no matter what.
There are some other headlines, Ben. I'll just bring them to you dropping on this Trump. It's looking at back and down on the 50% duties on Canada. May back off doubling steel tariffs, will probably make a different tariff decision, I will let you know. So what do you make of those headlines?
That's exactly, it's it's changing by the moment here. He's, I know I gather this is from, he's speaking to um, he's and now he's appearing with a Tesla right now, as we're speaking, to buy a Tesla from Elon Musk to show his support from him. So I think he's taking questions from reporters. Yeah, it sort of points to the larger point here that everything is negotiable at every moment. And so he's kind of going back and forth on this. I think the big drawdown would be if he backs away from the steel aluminum tariffs. What I wrote about today was how actually the steel CEOs, a lot of them really are supportive of this, they've been, they've been crawling, they've been yelling for more protection for years now, based on Chinese steel dumping. So he actually has support for certain levels of steel and aluminum tariffs. Kind of going big and upending markets even further obviously goes against that for him.
Yeah, and it's unclear whether he's talking about getting rid of all of those steel and aluminum tariffs now before they're supposed to go into effect tomorrow, or go back to the 25% level we talked about. As he said, I'll let you know. Um and as he has been moment by moment. Meanwhile, Ben, and the president is also set to meet with some of the country's top business executives tonight, folks from the business round table, what do we know about that meeting?
So that meeting will be at 5 o'clock tonight. So just in a couple hours time, he's going to go to the business round table's office. Business round table is a group for people who don't know, it's the sort of voice of CEOs in Washington DC. There's over 200 of America's top CEOs are members, over 100 are expected to be in attendance this afternoon. And as we've been talking about this whole time, the the kind of what we're expecting or what I'll be watching for most specifically is anything on tariffs, you know. Every one of these speeches, you sort of the question is whether Trump is going to offer any give on tariffs. He clearly is going to comment on these, probably one way or the other. But the signals obviously from his from him and his team today are that they they don't, they're not backing down from the kind of larger point of their tariffs, which is I think what the CEOs to be fair to say want to hear, is sort of some give on tariffs. He he's going forward with his April 2nd reciprocal tariffs, no matter how much goes forward today, and sort of wants to set up a pretty giant tariff agenda. The question is whether he kind of gives anything to the CEOs in attendance who kind of want want some wiggle room, especially folks like Jim Farley who's the CEO of Ford, who's really wanted some some limits on that and and Trump hasn't been giving it so far, other than delays.
Right, yes, exactly. Well, we'll see what ends up happening tonight or or in the next couple hours before tonight. Thank you so much, Ben.
