INTERNACIONAL
Leading Canadian conservative says Ottawa should remove all tariffs as ‘Liberation Day’ arrives
OTTAWA – As Canadians brace themselves for President Donald Trump’s «Liberation Day» of reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, one political leader in Canada believes it could spark the start of a new era of Canada-U.S. relations free of cross-border taxes.
Maxime Bernier, who served as foreign affairs minister in former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government and now heads the right-wing People’s Party of Canada (PPC), told Fox News Digital in an interview from Halifax that it is «absolutely» the time for Canada to remove all tariffs against the U.S.
He said the 25% duties the Canadian government, under then-Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, imposed on the U.S. in early February to counter Trump’s 25% tariffs against Canada «won’t hurt the Americans – it is hurting Canadians.»
New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement following his March 28 call with the president – the first contact between both leaders since Carney was elected Liberal leader by his party nearly three weeks before – that Canada would implement retaliatory tariffs in response to Wednesday’s U.S. «trade actions.»
TRUMP’S 11TH WEEK IN OFFICE SET TO FOCUS ON TARIFFS AS PRESIDENT TOUTS ‘LIBERATION DAY’
President Donald Trump, left, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. (Getty Images)
The PPC leader said that Trump should be told that «the real reciprocal response» to tariffs is «zero on our side, zero on your side.»
Bernier said that instead, Carney and his main rival, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, are being «fake patriots using a dollar-for-dollar trade war against Trump» and telling Canadians: «That’s the best thing to do.»
«We cannot impose counter-tariffs,» said Bernier, who also served as industry minister in the Harper government.
«The Americans are 10 times bigger than us. We won’t win a trade war,» he said, underscoring that retaliation will lead to a recession in Canada.
Former Canadian Conservative politician Tony Clement, who served alongside Bernier in Harper’s Cabinet, told Fox News Digital that «from an economic point of view,» removing Canadian tariffs «makes a lot of sense» and «may come to that at some point, but the public isn’t there right now.»
«From a point of view of the emotional wounds of Canadians created by Trump and his annexation talk and tariffs, I’m not sure that a political voice would survive if it went down that public-policy route,» said Clement, a former Canadian industry minister in the Harper government.
Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada, meets with his supporters at an election rally in Borden Park on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
«The mood of the people is outrage. I’ve never seen people in Canada this incandescently mad at the United States,» he said, who is campaigning in the Toronto area for Poilievre’s Conservative Party ahead of the April 28 general election. «There is complete distrust of whatever Trump says because it can change within 24 hours.»
He said that both Poilievre and Carney have highlighted the importance of removing «the specter of tariffs for a long period of time – if you can trust Trump to be a bona fide negotiator.»
Eliminating Canadian tariffs, without a quid pro quo from Trump, could «show weakness to a bully,» added Clement, who, prior to entering federal politics in 2006, served as a Cabinet minister in former Ontario Premier Mike Harris’ Progressive Conservative government.
MARK CARNEY WINS LIBERAL PARTY NOMINATION TO REPLACE TRUDEAU AS CANADA’S NEXT PM
Canadians hold an «Elbows Up» protest against U.S. tariffs and other policies by U.S. President Donald Trump, at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto on March 22, 2025. (REUTERS/Carlos Osorio)
In the statement released following his recent conversation with Trump, Carney said that both leaders «agreed to begin comprehensive negotiations about a new economic and security relationship immediately following the election.»
Conservative strategist Yaroslav Baran, who served as communications chief for Harper’s successful Conservative 2004 leadership campaign, and director of war room communications for the Harper-led Tories during the 2004, 2006 and 2008 federal election campaigns, told Fox News Digital that under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), «trade in goods and services ought to be tariff-free» between Canada and the U.S., excluding carveouts on the Canadian side for dairy, eggs, poultry and softwood lumber.
However, Baran added that he «can’t see the removal of all Canadian tariffs on U.S. products as long as the U.S. has tariffs on Canadian products.»
Vehicles in line to cross into the United States at the Canada-U.S. border in St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec, Canada, on Thursday, March 6, 2025. President Donald Trump exempted Canadian goods covered by the USMCA from his 25% tariffs, offering major reprieves to the U.S.’ two largest trading partners. (Graham Hughes/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Bernier acknowledged that while Trump’s tariffs will hurt Canadian exporters to the U.S., «the solution is to have a more productive economy with real free-market reforms» in Canada through such measures as lowering corporate taxes, promoting internal trade and fostering growth in the country’s oil and gas industry, all of which are featured in the PPC’s election platform that includes the establishment of a «Department of Government Downsizing» to abolish «ideologically motivated programs that promote wokeism,» not unlike the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.
The PPC leader also said that Canada should be willing to «put everything on the table» under the USMCA «right now» and before the trilateral trade deal is scheduled for a joint review next year.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
According to Bernier, that should include ending the «cartel» of supply management that sets quotas and prices, and protects Canada’s dairy, poultry and eggs sectors from foreign competition, which he described as «a communist system» that finds Canadians paying twice the price of those agricultural products than Americans do in the U.S., and which also imposes duties – ranging from 150% to 300% — on U.S. imports of the same products beyond limits agreed to but yet to be reached under the USMCA.
During the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2018 that led to the USMCA, the first Trump administration sought to have Canada’s supply management system eliminated.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
A federal court fight over President Donald Trump’s authority to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court for review, legal experts told Fox News Digital, in a case that has already proved to be a pivotal test of executive branch authority.
At issue in the case is Trump’s ability to use a 1977 emergency law to unilaterally slap steep import duties on a long list of countries doing business with the U.S.
In interviews with Fox News Digital, longtime trade lawyers and lawyers who argued on behalf of plaintiffs in court last week said they expect the ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a matter of «weeks,» or sometime in August or September – in line with the court’s agreement to hear the case on an «expedited» basis.
The fast-track timeline reflects the important question before the court: whether Trump exceeded his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) when he launched his sweeping «Liberation Day» tariffs.
FEDERAL JUDGES GRILL TRUMP LAWYERS OVER ‘LIBERATION DAY’ TARIFFS ON EVE OF ENFORCEMENT
President Donald Trump, alongside Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent and then-Secretary of Commerce nominee Howard Lutnick, speaks to the press in the Oval Office of the White House on Feb. 3, 2025. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
Importantly, that timing would still allow the Supreme Court to add the case to their docket for the 2025-2026 term, which begins in early October. That could allow them to rule on the matter as early as the end of the year.
Both Trump administration officials and lawyers for the plaintiffs said they plan to appeal the case to the Supreme Court if the lower court does not rule in their favor. And given the questions at the heart of the case, it is widely expected that the high court will take up the case for review.
In the meantime, the impact of Trump’s tariffs remains to be seen.
Legal experts and trade analysts alike said last week’s hearing is unlikely to forestall the broader market uncertainty created by Trump’s tariffs, which remain in force after the appeals court agreed to stay a lower court decision from the U.S. Court of International Trade.
Judges on the three-judge CIT panel in May blocked Trump’s use of IEEPA to stand up his tariffs, ruling unanimously that he did not have «unbounded authority» to impose tariffs under that law.
Thursday’s argument gave little indication as to how the appeals court would rule, plaintiffs and longtime trade attorneys told Fox News Digital, citing the tough questions that the 11 judges on the panel posed for both parties.
TARIFF FIGHT ESCALATES AS TRUMP APPEALS SECOND COURT LOSS
President Donald Trump delivers remarks on tariffs in the Rose Garden of the White House, April 2, 2025. (Reuters/Carlos Barria/File Photo)
Dan Pickard, an attorney specializing in international trade and national security issues at the firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, said the oral arguments Thursday did not seem indicative of how the 11-judge panel might rule.
«I don’t know if I walked out of that hearing thinking that either the government is going to prevail, or that this is dead on arrival,» Pickard told Fox News Digital. «I think it was more mixed.»
Lawyers for the plaintiffs echoed that assessment – a reflection of the 11 judges on the appeals bench, who had fewer chances to speak up or question the government or plaintiffs during the 45 minutes each had to present their case.
«I want to be very clear that I’m not in any way, shape or form, predicting what the Federal Circuit will do – I leave that for them,» one lawyer for the plaintiffs told reporters after court, adding that the judges, in his view, posed «really tough questions» for both parties.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, who helped represent the 12 states suing over the plan, told Fox News Digital they are «optimistic» that, based on the oral arguments, they would see at least a partial win in the case, though he also stressed the ruling and the time frame is fraught with uncertainty.
In the interim, the White House forged ahead with enacting Trump’s tariffs as planned.
Pickard, who has argued many cases before the Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, noted that the oral arguments are not necessarily the best barometer for gauging the court’s next steps – something lawyers for the plaintiffs also stressed after the hearing.
JUDGES V. TRUMP: HERE ARE THE KEY COURT BATTLES HALTING THE WHITE HOUSE AGENDA
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks alongside President Trump at the White House after the Supreme Court ruled judges cannot issue nationwide injunctions. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Even if the high court blocks the Trump administration from using IEEPA, they have a range of other trade tools at their disposal, trade lawyers told Fox News.
The Trump administration «has had more of a focus on trade issues than pretty much any other administration in my professional life,» Pickard said.
«And let’s assume, even for the sake of the argument, just hypothetically, that the Supreme Court says this use of IEEPA exceeded your statutory authority. The Trump administration is not going to say, like, ‘All right, well, we’re done. I guess we’re just going to abandon any trade policy.’
«There are going to be additional [trade] tools that had been in the toolbox for long that can be taken out and dusted off,» he said. «There are plenty of other legal authorities for the president.
«I don’t think we’re seeing an end to these issues anytime soon – this is going to continue to be battled out in the courts for a while.»
Both Pickard and Rayfield told Fox News Digital in separate interviews that they expect the appeals court to rule within weeks, not days.
The hearing came after Trump on April 2 announced a 10% baseline tariff on all countries, along with higher, reciprocal tariffs targeting select nations, including China. The measures, he said, were aimed at addressing trade imbalances, reducing deficits with key trading partners, and boosting domestic manufacturing and production.
Ahead of last week’s oral arguments, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said lawyers for the administration would continue to defend the president’s trade agenda in court.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Justice Department attorneys «are going to court to defend [Trump’s] tariffs,» she said, describing them as «transforming the global economy, protecting our national security and addressing the consequences of our exploding trade deficit.»
«We will continue to defend the president,» she vowed.
federal courts,donald trump,politics,supreme court,federal judges
INTERNACIONAL
Johnson dines with Netanyahu in landmark visit, highest US official to visit occupied West Bank
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
FIRST ON FOX: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson dined with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Judea and Samaria on Monday, in a visit that marked the most senior visit from a U.S. official to what is still internationally considered the occupied West Bank, but which has become a highly divisive topic in the U.S.
Though the dinner discussion largely focused on the ongoing war in Gaza and how to better secure aid deliveries as Hamas continues wreck on food access, Fox News Digital confirmed with Heather Johnston, the founder of the U.S. Israel Education Association – whose organization planned Johnson’s trip – that he and his delegation will also be meeting with Palestinian leaders during his Middle East visit.
Johnson, whose visit is considered a «private» trip and not an official state visit as it was organized by the association, also met with Israeli officials in the city of Ariel ealier on Tuesday – just over 10 miles from the Green Line, the armistice line marking the borders between Israel and the disputed Palestinian territories.
Though it is not unusual for members of Congress to travel to Israel under private means, including previous Speakers of the House like Kevin McCarthy who also met with Netanyahu in 2023, the location of the Johnson-Netanyahu dinner is significant.
EUROPEAN LEADERS DECRY HAMAS VIDEO OF ISRAELI CAPTIVES: ‘UNLIMITED INHUMANITY’
US House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, right, and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, shake hands during a meeting at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images)
Republicans in Congress have introduced legislation that would require all official U.S. documents to use the name «Judea and Samaria» rather than the West Bank, which it argues has become a «highly divisive label.»
Judea and Samaria refers to the historical and religious ties Israel has to an area that is internationally recognized as the West Bank, and which Israel captured from Jordan during the 1967 war after Amman first seized the territory of Mandatory Palestine, now dubbed the West Bank, during the Israel-Arab war of 1948.
It has since been deemed illegally occupied by the UN and the international community, though the U.S. has fluctuated over its views of the occupation status since President Donald Trump first entered office in 2017.
An Israeli soldier is seen during a protest in the town of Beita, in West Bank on July 26, 2024. (WAHAJ BANI MOUFLEH/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
NETANYAHU RESPONDS AFTER ISRAELI HOSTAGE SEEN EMACIATED, DIGGING GRAVE: ‘CRUELTY OF HAMAS HAS NO BOUNDARIES’
Trump evaded questions earlier this year over whether he would support Israel’s annexation of parts of the West Bank despite his strong support for Jerusalem.
But regardless of whether it has the backing of Israel’s chief ally, top officials in Netanyahu’s administration have made clear they intend to annex territory officially and less than two weeks ago the Israeli government passed a non-binding resolution that said Jerusalem should «apply Israeli sovereignty, law, judgment and administration» to the West Bank.
Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s questions about the significance of his visit.
Though it could suggest U.S. lawmakers may take a more decisive role in backing Israel’s expansionist plans as the Trump administration looks to end Israel’s war in Gaza while still opposing European and Arab nation’s increased push for an independent state of Palestine.
Israel’s (L to R) Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Israel Katz, and Energy and Infrastructure Minister Eli Cohen applaud during a session of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) at its headquarters in Jerusalem on June 11, 2025. (MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images)
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
The Times of Israel also reported last week that Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Defense Minister Israel Katz, the latter of which who Johnson met with on Sunday, believe that «at this very moment, there is a moment of opportunity that must not be missed» to implement «Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.»
The report did not confirm why this moment in time is so significant.
israel,mike johnson,benjamin netanyahu,middle east,world
INTERNACIONAL
De Godzilla a Astro Boy: cómo las bombas atómicas sobre Hiroshima y Nagasaki transformaron la cultura de Japón
El vínculo con la muerte
«Godzilla Resurge» tuvo un gran éxito en 2016. La película se percibió como una crítica a la gestión de Fukushima. Foto AFP
Alarma en Vaca Muerta por nueva caída de indicador clave
La dolorosa muerte que golpeó a Mimi Alvarado y Luciano el Tirri: «No llegué a tiempo. Se murió mi perrita Lily»
Trump’s tariff power grab barrels toward Supreme Court
Johnson dines with Netanyahu in landmark visit, highest US official to visit occupied West Bank
Acusado por afiliaciones truchas, indagan al titular de La Libertad Avanza y aliado del gobernador Zdero en Chaco
El Nápoles quiere pescar en la Premier League
La posibilidad de que Grabois se postule en octubre por fuera del peronismo hace resurgir las tensiones internas
Cristina Kirchner enviará a emisarios internacionales a denunciar en otros países que está “proscripta”
El mensaje que compartió Milei luego de la fuerte suba del dólar, que lo acercó al techo de la banda
Candidaturas testimoniales | Piden que los postulantes de la provincia declaren formalmente que se comprometen a asumir
Cristina Kirchner cruzó a Milei por la corrida cambiaria: “Lo único que se te ocurre es echarles la culpa a los ‘kukas’”
EN VIVO: Reportan la llegada de las primeras olas del tsunami a Japón tras el terremoto de 8.8 en la costa este de Rusia
Hay alerta amarilla por tormentas y frío extremo para este lunes 4 de agosto: las provincias afectadas
El Servicio Meteorológico Nacional (SMN) emitió una serie de alertas amarillas por tormentas y temperaturas extremas para este lunes 4...
Cruces y pases de factura entre Nación, Ciudad y Provincia por el nuevo examen de residencia tras las sospechas de fraude
Tras las denuncias de fraude masivo en el examen único de residencias médicas y el consecuente escándalo que desató el...
El exsenador Kueider se negó a ser extraditado: empieza el Paraguay el proceso para determinar si lo envían a la Argentina
El exsenador Edgardo Kueider, arrestado cuando pretendía entrar con dinero en efectivo a Paraguay, se negó a ser extraditado a...
POLITICA3 días agoMilei interrumpió la nota con Fantino para firmar un decreto: avaló contrarreloj una suba a estatales y residentes del Garrahan
- POLITICA3 días ago
Murió el general Carlos Laidlaw, un militar dedicado a la estrategia y la geopolítica
- CHIMENTOS3 días ago
Mauro Szeta reveló la información más dura de la muerte de Mila Yankelevich: «Eso causó el deceso»
