The premier of Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta said on Thursday that Americans will pay a lot more for gas if President-elect Donald Trump imposes a 25% tariff on all Canadian products.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said in an interview with The Associated Press that American refineries won’t have much choice but to increase the price of gas. Alberta provides 4.3 million barrels of oil a day to the United States.
“We would be responsible for about 25% of the American need for energy,” Smith told the AP.
The U.S. tends to consume about 20 million barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It has also been producing domestically about 13.2 million barrels daily.
“They are going to have to increase the price of gasoline by 25%,” Smith said. “Do Americans really want to pay an extra buck a gallon on gasoline?”
“The president-elect has also talked about his desire to keep things like fuel prices low,” she added.
Trump said the U.S. “subsidizes” Canada and is threating to impose the tariffs on all Canadian goods. He also wants Canada to stem what he calls a flow of migrants and drugs into the U.S. — even though far fewer of each crosses into the U.S. from Canada than from Mexico, which Trump has also threatened.
About 60% of U.S. crude oil imports are from Canada. Alberta has about a trillion barrels of oil, 200 billion of which are recoverable.
Smith said the U.S. faces a problem.
“If you don’t get it from Canada there aren’t a lot of great places you can get it from. You can get it from Venezuela or Iran or Iraq,” Smith said.
“I would humbly argue that Canada is a better friend and ally than any of those jurisdictions,” she added.
Smith also said Canada has a particular type of oil that American refineries need. She said they just need to make sure there are more pipelines.
The sponsor of the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline pulled the plug on that contentious pipeline in 2021, after Canadian officials failed to persuade President Joe Biden to reverse his cancellation of its permit on the day he took office.
Smith would love to get more pipelines approved during Trump’s tenure. She noted Alberta’s government took a billion dollar hit when Keystone XL was nixed as the government backstopped costs.
Smith also noted that Canada has critical minerals the U.S. needs, and that China is banning the export of some minerals to the U.S.
“The U.S. has major aspirations to continue building out its AI data centers and critical minerals are going to be central to that,” Smith said. “Canada has virtually everything the Americans are going to need.”
Canada has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the U.S.
Nearly $3.6 billion Canadian dollars ($2.7 billion) worth of goods and services cross the border each day. Canada is the top export destination for 36 U.S. states.
Smith responded to a social media post by Trump this week about Canada’s trade surplus, saying the U.S. has a deficit with Canada because Canada sends billions of dollars’ worth of raw materials like oil, gas and timber to U.S. refineries and factories. Smith said the U.S. relies on raw materials from Canada “to make trillions of dollars of wealth in your country.”
About 60% of U.S. crude oil imports and 85% of U.S. electricity imports are from Canada.
Canada’s ambassador to Washington, Kirsten Hillman, has said the U.S. had a $75 billion trade deficit with Canada last year. But she noted a third of what Canada sells into the U.S. is energy exports and said there is a deficit when oil prices are high.
Smith also addressed the uncertainty in Ottawa with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau facing calls from within his own party to resign.
Trudeau, whose mandate expires next year, is expected to reshuffle his Cabinet on Friday as the crisis mounts.
Smith also called for an election so that Canada would become stronger at the negotiating table with Trump.
“We don’t have a leader of our country who has a four year mandate,” Smith said. “It would be a lot stronger to have a prime minister who says ‘OK we’ve got four years to battle this out, you are not getting rid of me so let’s talk turkey’.”
