Category: Nation & World

OTTAWA, Ontario — After more than two weeks of finger-pointing, threats, and patronizing insults between longtime trading partners, Canada’s latest retaliatory tariffs against the United States are set to take effect just after midnight Eastern time Tuesday.

Polls show that Canadians strongly back Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to end trade talks with Washington last month and to hit back with tariffs on about $20 billion in U.S. products entering Canada. But there is also concern over what might happen next. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened another round of U.S. tariffs if Canada follows through on its plan.

Some in Canadian industry say they are inclined to take Trump at his word, at least on this threat.

People in the Trump administration “are willing to hurt themselves, their own sectors and industries, in pursuit of their goal, however misguided I think it is,” said Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’​ Association of Canada. “So they may escalate. I hope that we don’t end up in a tit-for-tat situation. We’re going to run out of runway.”

Carney announced Canada’s new tariffs after he pulled Canadian negotiators out of talks in Washington last month — an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to stave off 50% U.S. tariffs on $20 billion in Canadian exports and to reduce or eliminate tariffs of up to 50% on Canadian steel, aluminum, and automobiles.

The Trump administration said the tariffs it imposed last month were in part a response to retaliatory tariffs Canada placed last year on some U.S. imports, particularly autos. U.S. officials have repeatedly noted that only China and Canada retaliated against the United States since Trump began upending global trade.

At a news conference after a sternly worded speech announcing the tariffs, Carney declared that Canada had been attacked by the United States and that the two countries are now “at war.”

Last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent rejected that framing, arguing that Canada is too small an economic power to battle the United States. “I don’t think you can be in a tit-for-tat with someone who’s 13 times larger than you are,” Bessent said on CNBC.

On Friday, Trump escalated his trade rhetoric even further. He said that he might “end all trade with Canada” and other countries that have trade surpluses with the United States.

Separately, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Carney had shut down the talks to gain “political leverage” at home, not because of what the U.S. side had offered.

As last week went on, Carney made it clear that he was in no hurry to return to negotiations and was focused instead on diversifying Canada’s trade and expanding its domestic economy.

“At the appropriate time, the conversation will happen,” he said. “But the most important thing we can do is not to spend all our time waiting by the phone, waiting for a call, refreshing on social media to see what’s coming across.”

Many of the U.S. items that will soon face Canadian tariffs of 15%, 25%, or 50% mirror the Canadian exports that are now met with 50% U.S. tariffs, particularly clothing and wood products. Canada revised the list to remove dozens of fish products after the Canadian fishing industry said that tight cross-border integration meant that its members would also be harmed.

Canadian officials have suggested that many targeted items come from states where voters supported Trump, though some political analysts question how much pressure that will actually bring on the White House. The list also includes items with little bearing on the Canadian economy, including the metal bands that attach erasers to pencils, migratory bird identification bands, and fish egg incubators.

Trump has not imposed tariffs on some of Canada’s largest exports, including oil and gas and many minerals, and has exempted many products with enough North American content to move duty-free under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Auto parts, for example, are subject to a 25% tariff but generally cross the border without incurring it.

As a result, Canada’s overall average tariff rate remains low compared with what most other countries face, and the majority of its trade, by dollar value, is still duty-free.

After the talks collapsed, Trump threatened to impose 50% tariffs on autos and auto parts in January, apparently without the USMCA exemption — a move most analysts believe would be devastating for Canada’s auto industry. Trump has not taken formal steps toward carrying out the threat, though some in Canada speculate that rather than target new products or raise existing tariff rates, the Trump administration may instead strip away the USMCA exemption for many goods.

Volpe said that auto parts makers were not intimidated. He said that last year when the Trump administration proposed collecting tariffs on Canadian auto parts “they understood that it would shut down the auto industry in a week.”

He added: “Ultimately, I think they will back off that. But if they don’t, they can have at it.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

NEW YORK — Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor who shepherded New York City through the Sept. 11 attacks, said on Sunday that he did not think Mayor Zohran Mamdani should attend upcoming memorial ceremonies to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks.

“It offends me,” Giuliani said in an anti-Muslim diatribe on the far-right news outlet Newsmax, regarding Mamdani plans to attend the New York memorial. Giuliani also compared Mamdani to the Sept. 11 hijackers, who he said had hostility to America and “they weren’t hiding it like Mamdani is trying to hide it.”

Giuliani’s tirade also included baseless claims, including that Mamdani is a supporter of a Muslim plot that aimed at “taking over certain parts of America and certain parts of Europe,” a right-wing conspiracy theory he has endorsed in the past.

His comments on Sunday made him the most prominent person to endorse a call from some conservatives for Mamdani to skip the upcoming memorial ceremonies.

That demand has also been the subject of an online petition, which by Sunday had drawn almost 100,000 signatures.

Mamdani’s office declined on Sunday to directly address Giuliani’s comments, but directed reporters to his response to that online petition.

“I will proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year’s 9/11 commemoration, reaffirming that we will never forget the solemn day felt by all of us who call this city home and, frankly, by all of us who call this country home,” the mayor’s statement said.

The mayor’s office also pointed to two executive orders he signed this past week to establish Sept. 11 as an annual “Citywide Day of Remembrance and Service” and to take steps to modernize the city’s emergency preparedness procedures.

According to his schedule, Mamdani has already attended or plans to attend roughly a dozen Sept. 11 memorial events, primarily at firehouses across the city that had been the home stations for firefighters who died in the attack or developed illnesses in its aftermath.

Giuliani is expected to attend the ceremonies. Earlier this year, he was hospitalized with a serious case of pneumonia and said he believed his health problems stemmed in part from exposure to airborne toxins that blanketed parts of the city after the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Giuliani was two blocks away from the first tower when it collapsed, and his head and shoulders were dusted with ash from the disaster as he joined the throngs of people fleeing north through lower Manhattan.

Mamdani was 9 years old and in class at his Upper West Side elementary school when the attacks took place. He has spoken about the attacks as a formative experience for him as a child.

In an interview with the New York Times last year, he spoke of how important it is “to honor the memories of those that were killed” and described “learning their stories over the many years that I’ve been a New Yorker, the deep sorrow, that continues to this day, of futures that were stolen from so many and families that continue to live with that.”

He also talked about how Islamophobic backlash to the attacks had made anti-Muslim prejudice “a fact of life” for Muslim Americans.

“It was this horrific day that was also for many New Yorkers the moment at which they were marked an ‘other,’” he said.

Giuliani was widely praised and seen as a unifying figure after Sept. 11 for his stoic response to the attacks, which killed more than 2,700 people in New York City and left parts of Manhattan devastated for years.

But in the years since, Giuliani has politically drifted far to the right, serving as a high-profile surrogate and personal attorney for President Donald Trump. Last year, Trump pardoned Giuliani and several others who had been accused of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

KYIV, Ukraine — President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met with officials in Ukraine on Sunday, their first trip to the country and the second stop on a diplomatic tour aimed at reviving efforts to end the war between Ukraine and Russia.

Witkoff and Kushner came straight from Moscow, where they spoke Saturday with Russian President Vladimir Putin for several hours. They arrived in Kyiv, the capital, by train, alighting on a platform bearing a sign that read, “PEACE EXPRESS,” and then were taken by motorcade to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Witkoff and Kushner, who have traveled to Moscow several times, had never before visited Kyiv, despite multiple official invitations.

“We have been waiting for Steve and Jared, Witkoff and Kushner, for a long time,” Zelensky told reporters before greeting the two with hugs.

The men met for about three hours in the gilded halls of Mariinsky Palace, the official residence of Zelensky. They briefly addressed journalists afterward, with Witkoff saying it had been a meaningful, substantive, and encouraging conversation.

“We look forward to continuing this day as long as it takes,” he said, seated across a large table from the Ukrainian delegation. A second round of talks got underway soon after, with national security advisers from Britain, France, and Germany joining the discussion.

Witkoff thanked the Ukrainian delegation, saying they had a “delightful trip” and were having a “great time” in Kyiv, calling the hospitality “unsurpassed.”

The meetings come at a dangerous moment in the nearly five-year conflict. Russia and Ukraine have both been escalating, waging an intensifying air war at least in part to try to gain the upper hand in settlement talks.

That was reflected in the delicate, weekslong discussions around the U.S. envoys’ travel. The United States insisted that Ukraine temporarily cease attacks on Moscow and that Russia temporarily halt attacks on Kyiv while the men were in those cities, according to officials familiar with the diplomatic effort.

Zelensky publicly committed to doing so Friday evening, hours before Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, and Kushner, his son-in-law and frequent negotiator, landed in Moscow. While they were there, the Kremlin announced that Russia would pause strikes on Kyiv for three days.

Few expect a breakthrough from the U.S. envoys’ trip, which has been billed as the first step toward reviving talks mediated by the Trump administration. Those are expected to resume late this month — days after Russia’s parliamentary election and weeks before U.S. midterm elections, Ukraine’s chief negotiator, who greeted the envoys at the train station Sunday, recently told the New York Times.

Trump returned to office last year pledging to end the war in Ukraine swiftly. He enlisted Witkoff and later Kushner to assist with negotiations, which have unfolded in fits and starts.

By February, Witkoff and Russian and Ukrainian negotiators had whittled a 20-point peace plan to two key unresolved points: management of a Russian-occupied nuclear power plant and control of territory that Ukraine still holds in the eastern Donbas region. Then the United States and Israel attacked Iran, shifting the White House’s attention away from resolving the war in Ukraine.

Trump told reporters Friday that Witkoff and Kushner were traveling with a proposal to end the war, but he did not provide further details.

It was unclear whether it was a new proposal or if the men would be pushing to close the gap on the remaining issues.

Few in Ukraine expect a speedy resolution. The Kremlin has given no indication that it is ready to stop the fighting, and Ukrainian officials say they expect Russian forces to try to inflict as much pain on Ukraine as possible during the winter in hopes of pummeling Kyiv into submission at the negotiating table.

The Russian military’s gains on the battlefield have slowed in recent months. Yet the Kremlin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters that Putin, in his meeting with the Americans, emphasized that Russia’s forces were advancing and would achieve their goals.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.