Liberals pressed to reveal how much revenue U.S. tariff response has raised

OTTAWA — The Conservatives pushed the federal government on Monday to disclose how much revenue its counter-tariffs have generated so far — and accused the Liberals of putting their “elbows down” as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to ramp up his trade war.

Conservative members of Parliament asked at least 10 questions of the government in the House of Commons on Monday about the revenue raised so far from the counter-tariffs.

Kyle Seeback, Conservative MP for Dufferin—Caledon, accused Prime Minister Mark Carney of putting his “elbows down” through exemptions that limit the impact of Canada’s counter-tariff response as Trump threatens to double existing tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50 per cent.

Carney was in Saskatoon meeting with Canada’s premiers on Monday. Responding to Seeback on the government’s behalf, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne insisted that Canada will “fight against unjustified and illegal tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.” He did not answer questions about the amount of revenue raised by counter-tariffs.

However, the federal government’s latest fiscal monitor, published May 30, showed Canada collected an extra $617 million in import duties in March, compared to a year earlier.

Revenues from customs import duties topped $1 billion in March, more than double the $427 million recorded a year earlier.

“This one-off bump seems pretty directly linked to the retaliatory tariff action taken by the Government of Canada,” said Randall Bartlett, deputy chief economist at Desjardins.

Figures have not been published on how much revenue was generated by import duties in April or May.

But Bartlett warned that, at the current pace, the revenues will fall short of the Liberals’ projections.

The United States’ stop-and-go tariff dispute kicked off against Canada in March after Trump declared an emergency at the northern border related to the flow of fentanyl. He partially paused levies a few days later for imports that comply with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade.

In response, the federal government slapped retaliatory tariffs on billions of dollars in U.S. goods entering Canada — costs that are paid by Canadian businesses importing the items.

The federal government announced some exemptions to Canada’s counter-tariffs on April 15 related to certain inputs for manufacturing sectors, as well as for goods critical to public health and safety or national security.

The Liberal party election platform, released four days later, projected that counter-tariffs on the United States would raise an estimated $20 billion over 12 months.

Speaking on March 12 after Canada imposed retaliatory tariffs in response to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, Carney said the government would “make sure that all the proceeds from our tariffs go back to support workers in the affected industries.”

Bartlett said the fiscal monitor shows the tariff response in March offered some “windfall” revenue for Ottawa that improved the federal government’s fiscal position heading into the thick of the trade dispute.

But those single-month levels, if repeated through the current fiscal year, would leave the government well short of the revenue estimates in its platform.

“You need to really double or triple that pace of tariff revenue collection to hit the $20 billion in additional revenues,” Bartlett said.

The trade dispute also threatens to hold back Canada’s economic growth, Bartlett said, which would in turn throttle revenues paid into Ottawa’s coffers through corporate and personal income taxes.

Counter-tariffs, as a source of government revenue, are unlikely to offset the overall hit to the Canadian economy, he said.

“What might be a very near-term boost to overall revenues is really something that’s going to fade gradually … as it gets offset by weaker overall incomes in the broader Canadian economy,” Bartlett said.

The Canadian Press reached out to Champagne’s office Monday to ask if the Liberals are still banking on $20 billion in counter-tariff revenues in the current fiscal year. His press secretary pointed to an interview the minister gave to CBC’s Power & Politics program last Thursday.

Champagne said then that the figure in the Liberal platform was “a projection at a moment in time” and noted the tariff situation has been changing rapidly.

“Obviously we’ll have to see where we end up,” he said. “The scenario we want is to have no tariffs, so there would be no counter-tariffs.”

The Liberals are forgoing publishing a spring budget but have promised a fiscal update in the fall.

Champagne told the CBC last week that the Liberals want to present a fiscal projection when they have “a level of certainty.”

That argument doesn’t satisfy Bartlett, who said the federal government feels “rudderless” at the moment.

He pointed out that the Liberals were able to publish at minimum an economic and fiscal “snapshot” in July 2020, a few months after deploying “enormous” stimulus in response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

No government ever has perfect clarity about its fiscal projections, Bartlett said, but tabling some kind of update sends important signals to Canadians and financial markets about the government’s policy agenda.

He said that a lack of fiscal transparency has real life consequences for households — failing to provide clarity on the level of debt the government plans to issue can drive interest rates higher, for example.

Bartlett argued a fiscal update is particularly important as the government promises increased infrastructure and defence spending and a broad-based income tax cut taking effect July 1 — measures that will simultaneously ramp up spending and structurally reduce tax revenues.

“It’s very difficult to have certainty as to what direction fiscal policy is going in, except that it is toward larger deficits and higher debt,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 2, 2025.

Craig Lord, The Canadian Press