Trump Has Paused His 50% Tariff on Canadian Spirits and More Goods

Our northern neighbor won’t be seeing any new U.S. levies just yet.

President Donald Trump just announced that he is pausing his eye-watering 50 percent tariff on Canadian goods—which include whisky, wine, hockey equipment, and more—for three days. The new levy was set to go into effect on Wednesday.

“I have paused the 50% tariffs against Canada that were scheduled to kick in tomorrow morning for a three-day period, based on the fact that Canada and the USA, subject to the finalization of documents, have a deal,” Trump said in a social media post.

The agreement, should it come to fruition, will include “comprehensive market access for all American goods, economic security commitments, digital trade alignment, and many important provisions that will continue to protect our market and American workers, along with our Canadian partners,” according to the U.S. Trade Representative, per ABC News.

This is just the latest installment of a trade war between the U.S. and our northern neighbor. It all started back in 2025, when Trump placed his first round of tariffs on Canada. As a result, nearly all the country’s provinces banned the sale of American spirits and wines. (Only Alberta and Saskatchewan have lifted their bans as of now, while 70 percent of Canadians today support an outlawing of American booze.) And distilleries across the U.S. weren’t very pleased with the move either.

The fallout was swift: U.S wine exports, for one, plummeted by $428 million in 2025, a decline fueled by a 76 percent decrease in exports to—you guessed it—Canada. In retaliation to those bans, the U.S. decided to heave yet another tariff on the Great White North, hence this new 50 percent levy.

“The United States, U.S. businesses and workers, and U.S. commerce suffer from the Canadian provinces’ and territories’ unreasonable and unequal impositions and discriminations with respect to U.S. alcoholic beverages,” the administration said in a statement, citing that Canadian imports of all U.S. booze decreased by 81 percent from March 2025 to February of this year, compared to the same period between 2024 and 2025.
 
And as for if this latest deal is where the saga will end, that remains to be seen.