“Canada has made business for our dairy farmers in Wisconsin and other border states very difficult. We will not stand for this. Watch!” President Donald Trump tweeted. | AP Photo Trump offers more tough talk against Canada on trade

President Donald Trump on Tuesday issued more tough talk against Canada, just a day after his administration said it would impose a roughly 20 percent tariff on softwood lumber imported from the country.

“Canada has made business for our dairy farmers in Wisconsin and other border states very difficult. We will not stand for this. Watch!” Trump tweeted.


The president in recent days has been escalating his trade talk with Canada. Speaking in Wisconsin last week, Trump promised to stand up for the state’s dairy farmers, and singled out Canada for doing “some very unfair things.”

“What’s happened to you is very, very unfair. It’s another typical one-sided deal against the United States, and it’s not gonna be happening for long,” Trump said, promising to call Canada and “get the solution, not just the answer” to what happened.

Trump didn’t detail the “very unfair things” that Canada is doing, but said he read about them.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Monday night offered his own blunt language against Canada.

"It has been a bad week for U.S.-Canada trade relations,” Ross said. “Last Monday, it became apparent that Canada intends to effectively cut off the last dairy products being exported from the United States. Today, in a different matter, the Department of Commerce determined a need to impose countervailing duties of roughly one billion dollars on Canadian softwood lumber exports to us. This is not our idea of a properly functioning Free Trade Agreement."

In an apparent attempt to downplay the discord between the U.S. and its northern neighbor on Tuesday morning, Ross told CNBC that he "wouldn't regard the Canadian situation as being anything like the war with ISIS."

The Trump administration's decision to enact the tariff garnered bipartisan praise, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer comparing the move to work on the issue he had done on behalf of New York dairy farmers.

"Glad to see @POTUS join our fight to change Canada's unfair policy that undercuts our farmers," Schumer tweeted.

