A feverish week in Canadian policy and trade, with more procedures on the road

(Listen to “The Daily”: Attachments: Canada’s response to Trump’s trade war))

What next: Mr. Ford met, along with Dominic Lieblank, the new International Trade Minister, and Francois Philippe Champagne, the new finance minister, with their counterparts in Washington: Howard Lottenic, US Trade Minister, and Jameson Jarir, US Trade Representative. The message they received, according to Matina, is “there was no way to Nada, or any other country in President Trump’s cross, can avoid a new round of comprehensive definitions on April 2.”

(Read: The pain of tariffs first, deals at a later time, Canada tells us at the main meeting))

These definitions will be “mutual” – that is, the United States will apply the same definitions against Canada exports that Canada places on exports from the United States.

Because of USMCA (or CUSMA, as it is called in Canada), the free trade agreement signed under the Trump Administration first, and Canada has a relatively few customs tariffs on American imports regardless of some agricultural products, especially dairy, which are part of the supply management system. Therefore, in theory, mutual definitions may have a relatively little effect.

But there is a wild card. Mr. Trump sees taxes of added value, such as goods and services tax, as tariffs because they are not applied to exports-a view that most commercial economists do not share. How can Mr. Trump follow the tax of goods and services, and how this can affect the trade between Canada and the United States, is unclear.

A more larger trade problem may explode on April 2, when Mr. Trump’s suspension is a comprehensive tariff and perhaps 25 percent is destroyed on most Canadian exports and a 10 percent tariff for energy and some minerals ending. (These fees are already imposed on some Canadian exports that are not approved as compliance with the rules of North America’s content in USMCA.)