B.C. Premier Eby Urges Ottawa to Reach Beyond Matching Tariffs in U.S. Trade Fight

British Columbia Premier David Eby is pressing Prime Minister Mark Carney to expand Canada's retaliation against U.S. tariffs beyond matching duties, pointing to levers Ottawa has so far left on the table — including a rethink of the $12-billion F-35 fighter jet purchase and an accelerated phase-out of American thermal coal exports through a Metro Vancouver port. (The Globe and Mail)

Eby's call comes after trade talks between Canada and the United States collapsed on a Friday, prompting the Trump administration to impose 50 per cent tariffs on $28 billion worth of Canadian goods. Carney responded with matching tariffs on U.S. products, set to take effect Sept. 8, along with support measures for affected sectors. Ottawa has also pledged a $7.5-billion trade relief package.

Eby told reporters the latest U.S. tariffs were an unjustified attack on families and what he called an "extortionate attempt" by U.S. President Donald Trump to bend Canada "to his whims and his will." (The Globe and Mail)

The premier's central argument is that Ottawa's response, while necessary, is missing key elements. He said British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec are bearing a disproportionate share of the trade-war impact, and that matching U.S. tariffs one-for-one will not put enough pressure on the White House or adequately protect Canadian economic interests. (The Globe and Mail)

On the F-35 file, Eby referred to Canada's planned purchase of $12 billion in fighter jets from the United States. The Carney government launched a review of that procurement — the formal process by which government buys military equipment — at the outset of the trade war in early 2025, but no decision to pause or cancel the contract has been announced. Eby is now pressing Ottawa to treat the purchase as a live instrument of trade leverage rather than a settled commitment.

Eby also pointed to the export of American thermal coal through a port facility in Metro Vancouver, urging the federal government to speed up the planned phase-out of those shipments. Thermal coal is the type burned to generate electricity, as distinct from metallurgical coal used in steelmaking. The coal transhipment issue is not entirely new to B.C. politics. Former B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad previously proposed a levy on U.S. thermal coal shipments as a means of pressuring the White House not to impose tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber. Eby's invocation of the file signals a widening of the non-tariff toolkit beyond what either major B.C. party has previously floated.

The non-tariff measures Eby is advancing operate in different jurisdictional lanes — that is, they fall under different levels of government. The F-35 procurement is squarely a federal responsibility: sole-source defence contracts, contracts awarded without a competitive bidding process, are negotiated and cancelled by Ottawa, not the provinces. The thermal coal transhipment through Vancouver involves a more complex mix: the port falls under federal authority, but provincial environmental regulation and permitting timelines give B.C. leverage over the operational conditions under which U.S. coal moves through the facility. Eby's decision to name both levers simultaneously is an implicit reminder that effective retaliation need not wait on a single order of government.

There is also a domestic political dimension to the move. By naming the coal file alongside the F-35 purchase, Eby is positioning B.C. as a province prepared to absorb costs in service of a harder-edged national strategy, while simultaneously pressing Ottawa to move faster on files where provincial action alone is insufficient. The $7.5-billion relief package Eby cited is a federal commitment; the speed and structure of its disbursement will determine whether provinces hit hardest by the tariffs — B.C., Ontario and Quebec, in Eby's framing — see material relief before the economic damage compounds.

The broader context here is federal-provincial dynamics, and Eby's intervention is notable for its specificity. Premiers pressing Ottawa during a trade crisis is not unusual; premiers publicly itemizing the exact levers they want the federal government to pull — a named defence contract of known dollar value, a specific port facility and commodity — is a sharper form of intergovernmental pressure than the usual calls for "more support." It puts the F-35 review and the coal phase-out timeline squarely on Carney's agenda at a moment when the matching-tariff response is already locked in for Sept. 8.

Whether Carney incorporates either measure into the federal response is an open question. The F-35 review launched in early 2025 has not produced a public recommendation, and the thermal coal phase-out timeline has not been publicly accelerated in response to the latest tariff escalation. What Eby has done is ensure both files are now part of the visible trade-war policy debate, with a Sept. 8 implementation date for Canada's matching tariffs as the immediate benchmark against which any expanded response will be measured.