Ontario Premier Doug Ford, saying "both parties are heated and the temperature needs to come down," has suspended the Canadian province's 25% surcharge on electricity exports to the US. Ford, who vowed to be "relentless" earlier Tuesday after President Trump said he would double US tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, said he had a "productive conversation" with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about the economic relationship between the US and Canada, CNBC reports. Ford said he would travel to Washington, DC on Thursday with Canada's finance minister to discuss a "renewed" United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.
"They understand how serious we are about the electricity and the tariffs, and rather than going back and forth and having threats to each other, we have both agreed that cooler heads prevail, we need to sit down and move this forward," Ford said, per the CBC. After Ford's move, Trump said he would "probably" reduce the tariffs on Canadian imports. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump described Ford as a "gentleman" before arguing once again that Canada should become the 51st state, the Guardian reports.
Ford called the invitation to Washington, DC an "olive branch," CP24 reports. "When you're negotiating with someone, they call you and they hand over an olive branch, the worst thing I think I could do as Premier of Ontario is ignore them and hang up the phone on them," he said. "I don't operate that way. I believe when someone's putting out an olive branch, we sit back, we accept it graciously." (More tariffs stories.)
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