WASHINGTON — The United States moved ahead early Tuesday with a ban on nearly $1 billion worth of Canadian imports, including alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motorcycles, in the latest escalation of President Donald Trump’s second-term trade war with America’s longtime ally, according to the Associated Press.
The ban, effective at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday, amounts to barely a ripple in the $880 billion in annual two-way trade between the two countries. But trade experts say it marks another ratcheting up of tensions that are already strained.
The import ban “certainly won’t do anything to help the trade tensions between the United States and Canada,” said trade attorney Patrick Childress, a partner at Holland & Knight and a former U.S. trade official.
The latest round of sparring began over the summer, when Trump invoked a Depression-era trade law to impose 50% tariffs on about $20 billion worth of Canadian imports, charging that Canada discriminates against U.S. dairy, auto and alcoholic beverage producers. Canada promptly counterpunched with tariffs of 15%, 25% or 50%, matching U.S. imports dollar for dollar. Trump then ordered the import ban to punish Canada for retaliating.
The economic impact is likely to be modest, analysts say. Childress noted that many of the banned products were already facing the 50% tariffs. “For a lot of these goods, the 50% was already acting as a de facto ban by making importation from Canada into the United States uneconomical,” he said.
Jacob Jensen, director of trade policy at the center-right American Action Forum, calculates that the ban covers about $967 million worth of Canadian imports based on 2025 figures, with 87% of that total in alcoholic beverages. The U.S. targeted those products in part because several Canadian provinces responded to Trump’s tariff threats by pulling American liquor from store shelves.