Manitoba ready for battle, awaiting word from the front: Kinew Premier puts province’s critical minerals, hydroelectric exports on the table but hopes cooler heads prevail over tariffs in U.S. capital Thursday By: Carol Sanders Posted: 7:46 PM CDT Tuesday, Mar. 11, 2025 Last Modified: 7:56 PM CDT Tuesday, Mar. 11, 2025 Updates

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Premier Wab Kinew is hoping for an end to a tumultuous trade war with the United States as early as Thursday, when senior Canadian and American government officials, along with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, meet in Washington.

But in the event the summit doesn’t produce a ceasefire in the escalating cross-border economic war, Manitoba is prepared to use its critical minerals as well as hydroelectric exports as leverage, the premier told the Free Press Tuesday.

“Hopefully, we can move past retaliation and the back-and-forth and towards a negotiation — to get back to building our respective economies,” Kinew said.

Ford announced Tuesday that he agreed to suspend the 25 per cent surcharge he slapped on energy exports to three U.S. states Monday and that he’ll meet with Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Thursday.

Earlier Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to double 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum set to be imposed Wednesday in response to Ford’s Monday imposition of a 25 per cent tariff on Ontario energy exports.

Tuesday afternoon Ford suspended the energy tariff and Trump’s team walked back doubling the steel and aluminum levy.

“Doug Ford has got the Trump administration’s attention,” Kinew said. “That shows that electricity exports from Canada have a lot of leverage. It’s one of the important tools we have in our tool box to stand up for our country.”

The U.S. is reliant on Manitoba’s critical minerals — lithium, zinc and nickel, he said.

“So long as as tariffs are going to be threatened to our steel producers, our ag industry, our manufacturers, we’ve got to advocate using some of these tools we have — all towards getting something done at the negotiating table rather than the air war or the meme war that we’ve been seeing,” Kinew said.

“The best-case scenario is we’ll have a positive outcome with the U.S.A., and that’s what we’re hoping for this week. In the meantime, those tools are available to us.”

Manitoba has taken some counter-measures in response to the Trump tariff threats, ordering U.S. booze off Liquor Mart shelves and offering payroll and retail sales tax deferrals to impacted businesses.

On March 4 — when the first round of 25 per cent tariffs were levied on goods from Canada, and then paused a day later, the provincial government ordered Manitoba Hydro’s board to review its energy contracts with the U.S. and not sign, renew or cancel any U.S. export deals without cabinet approval.

“I’m certainly very shocked that after two months they’re just reviewing energy exports now,” said Progressive Conservative finance critic Lauren Stone.

The opposition has been asking the government for months what its plan is for dealing with expected U.S. tariffs and what the economic impact would be for the province, said Stone (Midland).

“They kept saying they weren’t going to talk in hypotheticals,” she told the Free Press. “Clearly they haven’t done their homework up until now.”

While Ontario’s premier has blamed Trump for launching the trade war that could lead to a recession in both countries, Canada is responsible for leaving itself open to attack, University of Winnipeg political science professor Malcolm Bird said.

“We are in this predicament because of very poor decisions that Canadians and Canadian governments have made over the last 20 years,” said Bird, who studies Crown corporations.

Inadequate attention paid to drug trafficking, the borders, military preparedness, sovereignty and understanding the risks associated with Canada’s dependence on a single trade market are all such examples, he said.

“Where is our liquefied natural gas plant? Where are our pipelines that would allow us to export our No. 1 and No. 2 products to other people?” Bird said.

Supply-chain expert Robert Parsons agreed that Canada is partly to blame for being in a predicament where it’s so reliant on U.S. trade. Now it needs to be smarter, he said.

“In this current environment of a dispute, I think it is prudent that nothing should be off the table,” said Parsons, a sessional instructor at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business.

He praised Ford’s ability to play hardball while communicating to Americans that Canadians value their relationship and don’t want a fight that hurts people in both countries.

“We want to be careful and adroit at how we act, what we actually do, and think it through, because we want to ensure that it is something that gets the attention of the president of the United States either directly or indirectly, but also is not going to diminish the relationship we have with neighbours and states.

“We don’t want to turn this into just a cat fight. We want it to make sure everybody understands we don’t want to be doing this. It’s just the weirdest situation imaginable.”

— With files from the Canadian Press

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca