Trump pauses most global tariffs, but changes nothing for Canada and Mexico

The frenzied trade war between the United States and the rest of the world took another turn this afternoon when U.S. President Donald Trump, pulling an about-face, paused tariffs for a number of countries.

Tariffs on Canadian goods, though, are ending the day the same way they started.

We're wrapping up our coverage on this page for the day, but here are some links if you're looking for more coverage on a particular story:

• A Trump administration official’s apparent mistake about Canada added confusion to what was already a chaotic day in Washington.
• U.S. stocks soared to one of their best days in history after Trump announced the pause.
• Some sectors are seeing more volatility than others. Here’s why.

See you tomorrow.

A theme that came up this afternoon is the Trump administration’s effort to present the 90-day pause on tariffs as something that had been in the works for a while, rather than a sudden reaction to chaos on the markets.

Trump said he'd been thinking about a pause "over the last few days" but the idea "probably came together this morning" and he just "wrote it up."

"We didn't have access to lawyers or anything. We just wrote it up from our hearts. It was written from the heart. It was written as something that was very positive for the world and for us," Trump said today of the tariff break.

"This was something, certainly, we'd been talking about for a period of time and we decided to pull the trigger."

Two days ago, Trump struck a very different tone. He said pausing tariffs wasn't on the table.

“We’re not looking at that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.

Bessent backed up the president's messaging, saying he spoke to Trump on Sunday and that "this was his strategy all along."

Following Lutnick’s comments urging Canada to remove its counter-tariffs on American goods, the official White House social media account reinforced the message with a post all in capital letters.

"DO NOT RETALIATE AND YOU WILL BE REWARDED," reads the post on X, formerly Twitter.

The White House followed up by posting a Fox News clip of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying those exact words at a news conference earlier today.

Unlike Poilievre, Carney didn’t start his event in Saskatoon by bringing up tariffs. But he got into the overall disintegration of the Canada-U.S. relationship without specifically mentioning what happened this afternoon.

He briefly indicated counter-tariffs are still a key part of Canada’s strategy, despite the U.S. threatening another round of retaliation.

“We'll fight Americans with what they understand. They understand money,” he told the crowd in Saskatoon.

“So we have put counter-tariffs on the Americans. Counter-tariffs that have maximum impact there and minimum impact here.”

Poilievre started his rally in Brampton, Ont., by addressing Trump's actions today.

He described the decision to leave tariffs on Canada intact as "the latest disrespect by President Trump of our country."

The crowd booed when Poilievre said, "almost every country in the world got a pause on American tariffs, but not us — America's best friend."

"This, after Prime Minister Carney boasted that he had a, quote, productive phone call with the president," the Conservative leader told the crowd.

"Prime Minister Carney is running his entire campaign on a false promise: that he can control the president through magical, masterful negotiating techniques. Well, we know now that that is not true. Nobody can control this president," Poilievre said.

Poilievre then said that while he would move "quickly to negotiate" with Trump, he'd also "focus on what we can control," which is to "reverse the disastrous Liberal economic policies of the last 10 years that made us so dependent on America firstly."

I'm with the team following Carney's campaign, which has landed in Saskatoon for a meet and greet tonight.

The Liberal leader spoke to the media earlier today, but just moments after he walked away from the podium, Trump sent the world into yet another furor by flipping his tariff policy.

The White House initially said the change would leave Canada with another 10 per cent baseline tariff, but later reversed course — creating confusion.

Liberal staffers travelling with us kept referring to Ottawa to ask for answers, since any response had to come from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), not the party.

The PMO was texting me that they didn’t have official confirmation.

Given the uncertainty, reporters following Carney have been pushing for him to comment while on camera.

We've been told no. Instead, the response from Carney came in a tweet.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick appeared to threaten more tariffs on Canada if the country doesn't back down on its current counter-tariffs.

"If Canada decided to keep their retaliatory move — which I would suggest, having watched how it went with China — [it] would be a really, really bad choice," Lutnick told reporters in Washington.

"Canada, they're in an election, so you never know. Maybe it's all election, you know, bluster, but we don't know. But the fact is, if they put those tariffs on, we're going to be talking in the Oval Office, and [Trump's] going to respond, so I hope they choose to refrain," Lutnick said.

Canada's retaliatory tariffs on the American auto sector came into effect today. This follows previously imposed tariffs in response to U.S. tariffs related to steel and aluminum, border security and fentanyl, critical minerals, energy and potash.

In a post online just now, Carney said the 90-day tariff pause for other countries is a “welcome reprieve.” He said he and Trump agreed the next prime minister will start negotiating with the U.S. on “a new economic and security relationship” immediately after the federal election.

Carney said Trump has also indicated that the U.S. will start negotiating with “a number of other countries” — and that he believes those talks “will likely result in a fundamental restructuring of the global trading system.”

An official from Carney's office confirmed with my colleague Catharine Tunney, who is following the Liberal campaign, that "there is no change for Canada" on tariffs stemming from today’s events.

The official said it was awaiting more information from the White House, but that as far as they could tell, there are "no new tariffs and no change to previously announced tariffs" on the country.

Carney hasn't spoken today about trade with the U.S. He's expected to meet and greet supporters tonight in Saskatoon, but it's unclear whether he'll speak beforehand about the events of the afternoon.