Canada floats defence purchases and critical minerals alliance to deter Trump tariffs

Canada floats defence purchases and critical minerals alliance to deter Trump tariffs Canada is open to buying more US military hardware and forging a deeper critical minerals alliance with its southern neighbor
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January 15, 2025 16:01
Canada floats defence purchases and critical minerals alliance to deter Trump tariffs

Canada is open to buying more US military hardware and forging a deeper critical minerals alliance with its southern neighbor, the country’s energy minister has said, as Ottawa lobbies to persuade Donald Trump not to impose swingeing tariffs, Report informs via Financial Times.

Jonathan Wilkinson told the Financial Times that Ottawa was eager to build closer ties with Washington that could support the president-elect’s priorities of strengthening America’s energy independence and meeting the challenge posed by China’s rise as an economic and military power. This could include purchasing submarines and other military equipment and developing more critical mineral projects in Canada that would displace Chinese products from US supply chains, he said.

“There are opportunities for us to procure a lot of the go-forward military equipment, like the submarines from the United States. And certainly, we are open to that as part of the broader conversation,” said Wilkinson during an interview in Washington.

But he warned Ottawa would respond with “tit-for-tat” measures if Trump, who will be sworn in as US president on Monday, imposed a threatened 25 percent tariff on all Canadian imports into the US. Wilkinson said retaliatory tariffs would focus on products that would create “the greatest amount of angst in the United States with the least amount of pain in Canada”, potentially steel from Michigan or orange juice from Florida. But he said such an outcome would undermine mutual trust and called the fight over tariffs a “distraction” from more pressing issues. “The challenge that we face internationally right now, it’s not Canada-US, it’s China,” said Wilkinson.

“It has strategic control of a number of different assets, and particularly true of critical minerals.” He called for the North American allies to “build an energy and minerals security partnership or alliance that actually enables us to both contribute to common outcomes.”

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