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00:00The Canadian Prime Minister says his government will fight U.S. tariffs with retaliatory trade
00:05actions of its own, but will wait a week to officially respond.
00:09Mark Carney says he'll speak first with provincial premiers and business leaders to discuss a
00:13coordinated response after Donald Trump announced plans on Wednesday to impose levies of 25
00:20percent on imported cars.
00:22Carney says nothing is off the table.
00:25We won't back down.
00:28We will respond forcefully.
00:31Nothing is off the table to defend our workers and our country.
00:36The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our
00:41economies and tight security and military cooperation.
00:46For the very latest on this story, let's cross live now to Ottawa where our correspondent
00:50Christopher Gooley is standing by.
00:53Christopher, no immediate response then from Canada.
00:57But what options are open to Mark Carney?
01:00What actions might he end up taking next week?
01:03Well, the obvious one would be retaliatory tariffs.
01:07That's been discussed in the last few days.
01:09Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada's most populous province, also wants retaliatory
01:15tariffs.
01:16But Mark Carney's playing it really careful today.
01:18He's not showing his cards.
01:20He has to speak to Donald Trump and that will happen either tomorrow or the next day.
01:24And I think he's drawn from his business background, his banking background.
01:28He's going to do this behind closed doors.
01:30He's firm.
01:31But I think he sent a few signals out in the last 24 hours.
01:35For me most particularly was yesterday when he said, when he referred to the US as Canada's
01:41neighbour, no longer Canada's friend.
01:44And do you expect then to see a markedly different response then from Mark Carney than that we
01:50would have seen from his predecessor when all of this started, this trade war tariff
01:54and these threats coming from Donald Trump?
01:57I think that Mark Carney's reflecting the mood in Canada of this fatigue, this back
02:03and forth.
02:04It's almost daily.
02:05Mark Carney's been prime minister for nine days.
02:07Donald Trump's been president for just a little over two months.
02:10And the country, Canada, is exhausted by this back and forth cross-border tariff threat.
02:16I think that Mark Carney's shutting this down.
02:19He's going to do this behind closed doors.
02:21He's not going to negotiate in public.
02:23But I think he's also made it very clear that he's looking across the Atlantic.
02:26He went to France and the UK within 24 hours of winning the Liberal leadership and becoming
02:34the prime minister-designate.
02:36And I think that that shows that Canada is now looking elsewhere for all kinds of alliances,
02:41not the least of which involves trade.
02:44Yeah, because we don't know at this stage whether these particular tariffs are going
02:47to be stacked on top of the 25% levies that are being imposed separately on all goods
02:53coming from Canada.
02:54So how are businesses there even able to prepare for what might be ahead?
02:58How are producers reacting to all of this?
03:01I think the timeline is next week, April 2nd, could be April 3rd, when Trump announces his
03:08tariffs, his next round of tariffs.
03:11And I think that that's when Canada's probably going to respond in a very formal way.
03:16How are businesses responding?
03:18Well, there's panic.
03:20I mean, there are layoffs, the Canadian dollar's down, markets are reacting.
03:25Donald Trump talks about creating a homegrown U.S. auto manufacturing hub.
03:33Mark Carney said the same thing yesterday.
03:36He invested over a billion dollars to focus on Canadian-made automobile manufacturing.
03:42The thing is, for both countries, is that for decades now, that manufacturing has been
03:48cross-border.
03:49A little bit of part of a vehicle is made on one side of the border, crosses over to
03:53the other side of the border, and back and forth, and you get the full, fully assembled
03:57vehicle.
03:58So now there's going to be a reconstruction of that manufacturing capability, effectively
04:04on both sides of the border.
04:05But the bottom line is that tariffs, as we've been talking about for weeks now, are going
04:10to hurt both sides, Canada and the U.S.
04:14American workers are going to be out of jobs, just out of jobs as they are in Canada.
04:18Christopher, thanks so much for all of that.
04:20That is our correspondent, France 24's Christopher Gooley, joining us there from Ottawa.
04:25Well, it comes as the U.S.