The White House announced late Tuesday that it has banned dairy products, alcoholic beverages and motorcycles from Canada as the trade war between the two longtime allies escalates.
A senior White House official said the ban will go into effect in three weeks and is in response to Canada’s imposing $20 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports earlier Tuesday. The U.S. ban will take effect at 12.01 am on Sept. 29.
The ban also includes whey, molasses, and non-alcoholic beer.
The official said that Canada set the precedent for banning imports when Ottawa decided to bar the shipment of U.S. alcohol last year during the first round of trade tensions.
“Canada set this precedent of banning things,” the official said. “It’s really just Canada and China who thought ‘I’m not going to do tariffs. I’m going to start banning stuff.’”
“They set this precedent and so we used the Section 338 authority, which allows the president to use tariffs in response to discriminatory action,” the official continued, referring to a section of an arcane 1930s law that empowers presidents to impose tariffs unilaterally under some defined circumstances.
SEE ALSO: Canada follows through on threat to impose tariffs on nearly $28 billion in U.S. goods
Most Canadian provinces, including Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia either boycott or have outright banned U.S. alcohol.
The administration will also slap an additional 50% tariff on cheese products, steel and aluminum, and bamboo furniture from Canada starting next Tuesday. Some existing tariffs on toilet paper, cement, and fishing rod parts were terminated after more government research on the tariffs’ impacts, the official said.
The announcement came shortly after President Trump directed federal agencies to prohibit the purchase of Canadian-origin products and barred Canadian firms from being eligible for federal contracts.
Both the U.S. and Canada have long fought over trade, but this is believed to be the first time Washington has banned products from Canada.
Mr. Trump’s action Tuesday is a change of pace from increasing more levies on Canada, which could have increased further retaliation by Ottawa that would have hit industries in border states like Michigan, New Hampshire and Maine, all of which have competitive midterm Senate races.
Canada is the U.S.’s second largest trade partner with an estimated $872.3 billion in goods last year, according to data from the United States Trade Representative. The U.S. imported roughly $426 billion in goods from Canada in 2025.
Of that total, about $1 billion in alcohol is exported to the U.S., including the whiskey used in Fireball, according to data from the Canadian government. An additional $250 million in dairy products are also exported to the U.S.
It is the latest move in the increasingly contentious trade war between Washington and Ottawa. The war hit a new peak this week as Canada rolled out retaliatory tariffs of 15% to 50% on American products – including steel, dairy, appliances, farm equipment and electronics – after Mr. Trump slapped a 50% duty on a swath of Canadian goods.
The escalation has soared since negotiations between the two neighbors collapsed in late August.
In a Truth Social post, Mr. Trump said barring Canada from earning government contracts was necessary to end what he called “a Canadian Trade Scam.” He noted that Canada has already banned U.S. companies from their government procurement market while Ottawa still had access to the U.S. market at the expense of domestic companies.
Mr. Trump said he directed the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to enforce the ban.
“From now on, no reciprocity – no access! I am hereby directing the GSA, working with the USTR, to take all necessary steps to remove Canadian-origin products from GSA’s Multiple Awards Schedules unless Canada restores full and fair reciprocity for American Farmers and Companies,” Mr. Trump wrote.
The White House official told reporters that the move was in response to Canada’s retaliation to Mr. Trump’s tariffs by imposing their own duties on U.S. goods.
“President Trump is doing this to make sure, again, that we keep a level playing field, deter retaliation, and, of course, protect American production,” the official said on a conference call with reporters.
The official declined to discuss the scale of the action, saying it’s roughly in the single-digit billions. In total, the U.S. government procurement market totals $50 billion.
Under the president’s directive, Canadian goods will be removed from the “Multiple Award Schedules,” which connect federal, state and local government agencies with suppliers of a wide variety of products.
Canada last year imposed a “Buy Canadian” policy that pushed government agencies to prioritize homemade products rather than imports from the U.S. and abroad.
Earlier Tuesday, Canada imposed tariffs ranging from 15% to 50% on roughly $20 billion worth of U.S. goods, which accounts for roughly 6% of U.S. exports to its northern neighbor.
The tariffs cover a wide variety of products, including electronics, appliances, and dairy products, and were imposed in response to Mr. Trump’s latest levies, which were imposed in late August, on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose decision to play hardball with President Trump is generally popular at home, said the blowback from trade tensions would be tough — but worth it.
“There is always a cost to action. But it doesn’t come close to the cost of standing still,” Mr. Carney said Tuesday in a video address to the nation. “This is about who we are as Canadians. “It’s about our livelihoods and the country we leave to our kids. The truth is, adversity only makes us stronger; it always has.
Mr. Trump said Canadian negotiators are nasty and that Americans do not need anything Canada produces. Administration officials accused the Canadian side of tanking trade talks to whip up political fervor ahead of pivotal elections in Quebec and Alberta this fall.
Canada responded with “dollar for dollar” tariffs on nearly $28 billion in U.S. goods, which took effect at midnight Monday.
Tariffs are duties imposed on foreign goods brought into a country’s markets. They are typically used to protect domestic industries against unfair competition, while generating revenue for national treasuries.
Mr. Trump also uses tariffs to gain leverage over other countries in negotiations. Critics of sweeping tariffs say they disrupt trade, weaken bilateral ties and raise prices when importers pass along the cost of duties to consumers.
Those concerns cut across party lines.
Sen. Susan M. Collins, a Maine Republican facing reelection, praised Canada for dropping seafood from its tariff list but worries the trade war will harm her state.
“For Mainers, commerce with Canada is a regular occurrence, as Maine borders only one state but shares a 611-mile border with Canada,” Ms. Collins said in late August while urging Trump officials to restart trade talks. “The United States and Canada must come back to the negotiating table and reach a fair agreement to prevent these damaging tariffs from taking effect.”
Mr. Carney said Tuesday that Canada relied on deep economic integration with the U.S. for decades.
“Truth is, it was easy business. But it meant we relied too much on one economic partner. It’s clear that time is over,” Mr. Carney said. “For the past year and a half, we’ve been steering our economy towards trusted partners.”
Over the holiday weekend, Mr. Trump threatened to cut off sales of Bombardier aircraft unless it makes its planes in the U.S., saying the Montreal-based company posed unfair competition to American aerospace firms.
Bombardier responded by pointing to supply chain sites across the U.S.
“The American aerospace industry is a clear winner on trade and exports,” the company said in a written statement.
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