TORONTO — Ontario Premier Doug Ford agreed Tuesday to suspend the province's surcharge on electricity it exports to three states after a top American official extended an "olive branch" in the form of a meeting in Washington to talk free trade.
Ford called Tuesday for cooler heads to prevail in the United States' trade war against Canada, which ratcheted up earlier in the day with U.S. President Donald Trump announcing he would double impending tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada to 50 per cent in response to Ontario's electricity surcharge.
The White House confirmed later Tuesday those tariffs would be scaled back to 25 per cent.
U.S Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick invited Ford and federal Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc down to Washington, D.C., on Thursday to discuss a renewal of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement on trade ahead of Trump's April 2 reciprocal tariff deadline.
In exchange, Ford agreed to suspend the electricity surcharge.
"Both parties are heated and the temperature needs to come down and I thought this was the right decision," he said after the call.
"I believe when someone's putting out an olive branch, we sit back, we accept it — graciously, by the way — thank him for that opportunity, and let's start moving," Ford added.
"All of you folks have seen how President Trump has changed things on a daily basis. I don't want to wait until April 2. God only knows what would happen from now till April 2. We need to get to the table as quickly as possible."
The president had also threatened in social media posts Tuesday to shut down Canada's auto industry and inflict an unspecified steep financial price on the country.
Trump later called Ford a "very strong man" and praised him for backing off the surcharge.
"It would have been a very bad thing if he (kept it in place) and he's not going to do that, so I respect that," the president said.
Ford had announced Monday that Ontario was placing a 25 per cent surcharge on Ontario electricity that it sends to New York, Michigan and Minnesota in response to Trump's tariffs on Canadian goods.
Ford has also been suggesting the province could cut off the supply of energy if the tariffs escalated.
"Did it catch their attention?" he said. "That's an understatement."
Ford has been doing numerous interviews with major American news networks, calling on Trump to back off the tariffs and renegotiate the trade deal if he feels there is an imbalance – though, as Ford often notes in the interviews, the deal was originally signed by Trump in his first term.
"I'm a businessperson, I want to sit down and negotiate this and stop the bleeding," Ford said.
"As we're going at each other, China's sitting back laughing, building their critical mineral arsenal."
Ford also said he will be meeting with Canada's prime minister-designate Mark Carney on Wednesday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 11, 2025.
Allison Jones, The Canadian Press
