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With just 11 days to go until the midterm elections, President Donald Trump is reportedly set to lift some of the staggering 50% tariffs he slapped on Canadian goods earlier this year in a bid to help longtime Maine Sen. Susan Collins’ (R) re-election.
Collins, 73, is locked in a tight race against Democratic challenger Troy Jackson and has publically called Trump’s tariffs on our neighbor to the north “a mistake.”
Jackson, 58, got in a now infamous zinger regarding the tariffs during a debate between the pair after Collins boasted she’d kept road salt off the tariff list, only to have Jackson quip: “We can’t eat road salt.”
Sources told The Wall Street Journal the United States could lift the tariffs on some agricultural and forestry items as early as Friday.
The White House did not immediately respond to Mediaite’s request for comment but a White House official told The Journal any tariff announcement would come from the administration and called the report speculation, according to the outlet.
Trump whipped up a trade war with Canada earlier this year after trade talks between the two nations collapsed on Aug. 21, sparking the massive 50% tariffs and a battle of words that made headlines for weeks.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney responded to the failed trade talks by promising to match American tariffs “dollar-for-dollar,” and sniffed at a spate of Trump’s Truth Social posts, which ran the gamut from bizarre mutant Canada geese armed with machine guns to threatening specific companies such as Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier — which employs about 3,000 Americans.
The tension even led to Trump’s now notorious renaming of Lake Ontario, which he rechristened as Lake America, kicking off a new round of outrage.
The reported move to help Collins comes as poll after poll shows bad news for Republicans heading into the pivotal midterm elections.
The post Trump Will Lift Some Canadian Tariffs in Bid to Help Susan Collins, Sources Tell WSJ first appeared on Mediaite.
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