WASHINGTON—Canada will get a special “carve-out” potentially allowing it to avoid the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial steel and aluminum tariffs, a White House spokeswoman suggested Wednesday.

After days of drama and a last-minute diplomatic scramble, the White House is now hinting that the impending tariff announcement might have some particular exceptions for the U.S. neighbours based on national-security considerations.

“There are potential carve-outs for Canada and Mexico based on national security — and possibly other countries as well, based on that process,” Sarah Sanders said during her daily media briefing.

“That would be a case-by-case and country-by-country basis.”

But the drama isn’t over.

The formal tariff announcement is expected Thursday afternoon. Hawkish White House trade adviser Peter Navarro suggests the exemption would come with a catch. He told Fox Business Channel that, at 3:30 p.m. ET, surrounded by steel workers in the Oval Office, Trump will sign proclamations that impose tariffs that kick in within 15 to 30 days on most countries.

He suggested tariffs could still hit Canada and Mexico later: ‘’The proclamation will have a clause that does not impose these tariffs immediately, on Canada and Mexico. It’s gonna give us ... the opportunity to negotiate a great (NAFTA) deal for this country. And if we get that, all’s good with Canada and Mexico.’’

Intense debates have been going on within the Trump administration about whether to offer any exemptions — some want a hardline approach where the tariffs apply to every country and some want the opposite, meaning full relief for Canada and other allies.

Then there’s the third, middle-of-the-road approach others have suggested, and which Navarro appeared to hint at: offering short-term relief for Canada and Mexico, while still using the threat of tariffs as a U.S. negotiating weapon at the NAFTA bargaining table.

The internal pressure from within Washington to go back to the drawing board was illustrated Wednesday in a letter from 107 congressional Republicans, who expressed deep concern about the president’s plans.

The Canadian government isn’t celebrating yet. It kept a low profile following the White House statement about a carve-out. Speaking earlier in the day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he wants to withhold judgment until the final details are out.

“We know from experience that we need to wait and see what this president is actually going to do,” Trudeau said during a news conference just before the Sanders briefing.

“There’s many discussions on this going on in the United States right now. We are going to make sure we’re doing everything we need to do to protect Canadian workers — and that means waiting to see what the president actually does.”

Behind the scenes, a full-court, 11th-hour diplomatic press was underway Wednesday.

It occurred in Ottawa, Washington, New York and even in Texas, where a number of Canadian officials were reaching out to American peers — some of whom had been pleading the Canadian case.

The fact that Canada might be hit with tariffs had actually become a leading talking point for critics bashing the Trump plan. From Capitol Hill, to cable TV, to the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, numerous commentators ridiculed the idea of a supposed national-security tariff applied to Canada.

A poll this week suggested the measures are unpopular.

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In the final diplomatic push, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke with congressional leader Paul Ryan, and Canadian Ambassador David MacNaughton was to dine Wednesday with U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan chatted with Pentagon counterpart James Mattis, UN ambassador Marc-Andre Blanchard spoke with U.S. counterpart Nikki Haley, and Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr raised the issue with Energy Secretary Rick Perry at a conference in Texas.

Trudeau, meanwhile, spoke with the president this week.

A source familiar with the last-minute scramble likened it to a high-stakes, reality-show contest, with a drama-courting U.S. president at the centre of the production: “(It’s a) last-episode-of-’The-Apprentice’ kind of thing.”

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Canada is the No. 1 exporter of steel and aluminum into the U.S., which is looking to impose tariffs under a rarely used national-security provision in a 1962 law, which some critics have called either illegitimate or likely to start copycat measures that threaten the international trading system.

Some trade hawks in the administration argue the tariffs must apply to everyone to be effective. If the goal is to keep out low-cost international steel, with excess Chinese supply dragging down the entire global market, they say the U.S. can’t allow any supply in at low global prices.

The counter-argument was that these measures might help some American steel workers, but hurt far more workers in other sectors that use steel, damage the economy as a whole and poison the U.S.’s relationships with the rest of the world.

The biggest American business lobby is among those pushing back.

‘’These new tariffs would directly harm American manufacturers, provoke widespread retaliation from our trading partners, and leave virtually untouched the true problem of Chinese steel and aluminum overcapacity,’’ U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue said Wednesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump is reaffirming his plans to place tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. During a White House news conference, he said "trade wars aren't so bad." (The Associated Press)

“Alienating our strongest global allies amid high-stakes trade negotiations is not the path to long-term American leadership.’’

The White House announcement came as congressional Republicans and business groups braced for the impact of the tariffs, appearing resigned to additional protectionist trade actions as Trump signalled upcoming economic battles with China.

Trump signalled other trade actions could be in the works Wednesday. In a tweet, he said the “U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft.” A White House official said Trump was referencing an ongoing investigation of China in which the U.S. trade representative is studying whether Chinese intellectual property rules are “unreasonable or discriminatory” to American business.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said an announcement on the findings of the report — and possible retaliatory actions — was expected within the next three weeks.

Business leaders, meanwhile, continued to sound the alarm about the potential economic fallout from tariffs, with the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce raising the spectre of a global trade war. That scenario, Tom Donohue said, would endanger the economic momentum from the GOP tax cuts and Trump’s rollback of regulations.

“We urge the administration to take this risk seriously,” Donohue said.

The president has said the tariffs are needed to reinforce lagging American steel and aluminum industries and protect national security. He has tried to use the tariffs as leverage in ongoing talks to revise NAFTA, suggesting Canada and Mexico might be exempted from tariffs if they offer more favourable terms.

Lawmakers opposed to the tariffs, including Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have suggested more narrowly focused approaches to target Chinese imports. But members of Congress have few tools at their disposal to counter the president, who has vowed to fulfil his campaign pledge.

“I don’t think the president is going to be easily deterred,” said Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who has suggested hearings on the tariffs.

Republicans in Congress have lobbied administration officials to reconsider the plan and focus the trade actions on China, warning that allies such as Canada and members of the European Union would retaliate.

The EU said it was prepared to respond to any tariffs with countermeasures against U.S. products such as Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Levi’s jeans and bourbon. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem said the EU was circulating among member states a list of U.S. goods to target with tariffs so it could respond quickly.

The president plans to rally Republicans in western Pennsylvania on Saturday in support of Rick Saccone, who faces Democrat Conor Lamb in a March 13 special House election. Trump has told associates the tariffs could be helpful to the GOP cause in the election in the heart of steel country.

With files from the Associated Press

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