At the G-7 meetings in Canada last week, President Trump reaffirmed his commitment to put American manufacturing workers first. Our president previously told thousands of steel workers in Pennsylvania that “we are going to bring it from 25 percent to 50 percent” the tariffs “to further secure” domestic steel and aluminum manufacturing. Trump keeps telling Prime Minister Mark Carney that “we really don’t want Canadian steel and we don’t want Canadian aluminum because we want to be able to do it ourselves.”
As Trump’s chief of staff during his first term, I travelled with him across our great country and saw firsthand his commitment to rebuild manufacturing communities that had been hollowed out by foreign countries engaging in unfair trade practices. Upon reassuming office, Trump moved swiftly to sign new Section 232 national security proclamations and most recently increased the tariffs from 25 percent to 50 percent to stop American aluminum and steel workers getting ripped off.
While the targeted tariffs were met with hysteria by the left-wing media and Canadian backed special interest groups, American manufacturing workers reacted with joy. In my home state of North Carolina, we have seen firsthand what happens when foreign producers take aim at American manufacturing. Aluminum, steel, furniture and textile manufacturing have been devastated by foreign government subsidized cheap products imported into the United States. Families suffer and jobs are lost and most of those jobs, sadly, will never return.
Now globalist elites that are heavily funded by non-U.S. interest groups are pushing for Canada to get an exemption or an alternative agreement to avoid the Section 232 aluminum tariff. Canada’s aluminum industry must not be rewarded at the expense of thousands of American aluminum jobs.
The Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation has reported on Canada’s subsidization of its electricity industry for the benefit of its aluminum producers. The simple reality is that the Canadian government provides significant subsidies to its aluminum industry, in the form of cheap electricity. Canada handed out over $850 million in subsidies to its aluminum industry. Here in the United States, domestic producers purchase electricity in accordance with free market principles.
During my time at the White House, Canadian aluminum imports surged by 47 percent by mid-2020 after Canada was granted a tariff exemption a year prior. The Canadian aluminum surge devastated American manufacturing families and led to the closure of three U.S. aluminum smelter. Seven hundred American aluminum workers lost their jobs in Washington state, 400 aluminum workers lost their jobs in Missouri and 600 aluminum workers lost their jobs in Kentucky.
At the time, President Biden could have used the mechanisms in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement we negotiated to reimpose relief and stop the bleeding after the first smelter closed. Instead, Biden under pressure from the same globalist groups, allowed the Canadian government and industry to keep their exemption and siphon off American jobs. We cannot allow history to repeat itself.
Now in 2025, the globalist aluminum associations and their foreign proxies are once again saying there must be zero tariffs on Canadian aluminum and peddling the same sky-is-falling rhetoric they used previously about Trumps’ targeted aluminum and steel tariffs. The sad reality is that these globalist special interest groups are more interested in lining the pockets of their members with foreign plants rather than putting American manufacturing workers first.
In 2000, there were 23 U.S. aluminum smelters and 10 in Canada. Today, there are still 10 aluminum smelters in Canada thanks to the Canadian government’s subsidies and only four aluminum plants remaining in the United States, a staggering 82 percent reduction in U.S. production capacity. Any exemption or special deal for Canadian aluminum will likely destroy the rest of our domestic industry and result in thousands of American jobs lost.
Our president is right, the U.S. is “done subsidizing Canada” and no exemptions for countries that have a track record of not playing by the rules. The president is not fighting for foreign countries like Canada and Mexico that rip us off on trade, he is fighting for you, your family’s future and millions of American manufacturing workers.
With over $14 billion in new U.S. investment announced, Trump’s 50 percent aluminum and steel tariffs address the root cause of the cheating and unleash a new Golden Age for our country. Now is the time to cast aside the loud voices of these radical globalist special interest groups that seek to undermine Trump’s trade agenda.
Mark Meadows served as the 29th White House chief of staff and as a member of Congress for North Carolina’s 11th District from 2013 to 2020.
