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“Those talks are taking longer than we had hoped. There is no longer a very precise date when they may be concluded and therefore they were added into the list of those who will bear tariffs.”

If Canada and Mexico choose to take retaliatory measures, it will not affect the ability to keep renegotiating NAFTA as a separate track, he added.

“If any of these parties does retaliate, that does not mean that there cannot be continuing negotiations,” Ross said. “They’re not mutually exclusive behaviours.”

On Wednesday, the Trudeau government said it would take additional steps to prevent foreign steel and aluminum from being dumped into the North American market — news that appeared designed to try to head off the tariff decision.

Trudeau, who was expected to respond to the decision later Thursday, spoke with Trump by phone earlier this week to counter the national-security argument, and made the same pitch Wednesday to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.

“He seemed to understand very clearly that national-security issues don’t really apply when you talk about steel or aluminum from Canada,” Trudeau said.

But the U.S. is pressing ahead nonetheless, a long-threatened tactic sure to cast a pall over the G7 summit Trudeau is hosting next week in Quebec. Some observers say a G6-plus-one scenario is already shaping up, with Trump as the outlier.

Ross played down the divisions.

“There are periodic disagreements between any two countries on any given set of topics. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it derails other discussions at all,” he said.