The retaliation remains a promise wearing a date. As of Monday, Canada's itemized counter-tariff schedule — the product codes, rates and annexes that turn a vow into border paperwork — had not been published. What exists is what Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Saturday: dollar-for-dollar matching of the new American levies on U.S. steel, electronics, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment and pulp and paper, effective September 8. [1] This paper documented the collapsed talks behind that vow over the weekend; the promise now waits on its paperwork.

The asymmetry is the story while the annex sits unpublished. Washington's fifty percent duties are already collectible at the border on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods; Ottawa's response is sector headings and a date. [1][2] Dollar-for-dollar sounds symmetrical. In practice it means matched pain on both sides of the same shopping aisle — cheese and hockey gear priced up stateside, appliances and farm equipment north of the line — with neither government naming the household in its press materials.

What the list will decide when it lands: which American products absorb the full match, whether the auto-sector dispute that broke three days of negotiations carries into the counter-schedule, and how much of the C$28 billion annual exposure BMO modeled actually gets covered. [2] Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has already promised measures responding to Canadian retaliation, so expect both schedules to grow before either shrinks. [1]

Watch the Department of Finance publication queue this week. Until product codes publish, every tariff screenshot on X is fan fiction with a flag on it.

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York