ANALYSIS: Hoekstra relays an idea to tax us like Europe, a ceiling that hides a 10% floor

A wedge at the cheese counter

Picked up September 28

The National Post, in an article picked up this Monday, September 28, writes that Washington is reportedly weighing a way to punish Mark Carney’s turn toward Europe. How? By treating Canada… like Europe.

While Brussels offers Canada a place as an associate, the idea fits in one sentence. Slide the country under the tariff deal Washington struck with the European Union.

At the cheese counter, in any grocery store, you weigh a wedge from France or Italy in your hand. The plastic sticks to your fingers. You put it down. You pick it up again.

The choice is European. The gesture is ours. Nobody, at that moment, is thinking about customs. They are thinking about supper.

The cheese has a file

Still, that gesture has a file. In Washington.

According to the Congressional Research Service, in a September 14 report, the White House holds this against Ottawa. Its retailers can obtain a share of the cheese quota under the agreement with the European Union. Not a share of the dairy quotas opened to American products under the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).

The grievance is about dairy. So is the bill. It already costs Canadian dairy products 50% in duties.

The complaint: more favourable treatment for Europe. The punishment floated: treating us like Europe.

European cheese is already an exhibit in the file.

An ambassador, a video

September 20

The idea has a voice. That of Pete Hoekstra. The United States ambassador to Canada.

The idea has a date. On September 20, Élie Cantin-Nantel posts an interview clip online. In it, the ambassador lays out the idea.

The idea has a source, at least according to him. American trade negotiators. He says he spoke with them. They reportedly answered that it would simplify things, since Washington already has a deal with Europe.

The key line he attributes to them: “We may just slide Canada in under the EU trade agreement.”

Then this: “Canada has made its decision.”

Washington would no longer treat Canada as a country with which it shares a border of four or five thousand miles, he adds. And the preliminary deal between the two countries can no longer serve as a starting point, according to the Post. Too much had changed. In three and a half weeks.

Negotiators without faces

Who are these negotiators?

The paper does not name them. Neither does Hoekstra. Not in the words the Post reports.

The ambassador’s office, for its part, declined to comment. The National Post had asked.

The only official name on the page: the messenger’s.

A number, translated

In other words

The paper’s headline sounds firm: the Trump administration is musing about hitting us with European-style tariffs.

The page itself quotes an ambassador.

And the 15% figure? Hoekstra utters none. Not in the quote the paper reports, anyway. It is the Post that translates. With an “in other words.”

Washington, it writes, could seek to apply to Canada the 15% ceiling imposed on most European exports.

Nameless negotiators, an unsigned number.

A hedge, twice over

A hedge in the headline. A hedge in the translation. So I read the idea for what it is. A relayed hypothesis. Not a decision.

And I read it differently from the paper. This 15% is not first of all a ceiling. For what crosses today without paying, it would be a floor.

The texts show it. One by one.

Phrased as a maybe, a threat costs its author nothing.

Fifteen percent, paid for by Brussels

August 21, 2025

The European ceiling has a birth date. August 21, 2025. That day, Washington and Brussels publish a joint statement.

In it, the United States commits to applying to European goods the higher of two rates. The usual most-favoured-nation duty. Or 15%.

The higher.

Fifteen percent, in this text, is not only a limit. It is also a minimum. A few products escape it. Aircraft. Generic drugs. Cork.

For European cars, the combined duty was not to exceed 15% either. Steel and aluminum stay outside. Washington and Brussels intended only to consider cooperation.

What Europe gave in return

And that rate was no punishment. It was a contract. With something given in return.

The European Union intends to eliminate its duties on all American industrial goods. The European Union intends to buy $750 billion of American energy by 2028. The European Union intends to invest $600 billion more in the United States over the same period. And to buy at least $40 billion of American artificial intelligence chips.

Slide Canada under this deal? That would mean lending it the tariff without the bargain that set it.

Brussels paid cash for that ceiling.

Ten percent since July

After the Supreme Court

Since then, the machinery has changed. Twice.

In February 2026, the US Supreme Court rules. The emergency economic powers law does not allow the president to impose tariffs. The Congressional Research Service recalls it in its September 16 brief.

A temporary 10% surcharge follows, for 150 days. It expires in July.

On July 23, the US Trade Representative publishes the regime that takes over. Duties on 60 economies. In the name of fighting goods made with forced labour.

Two calculations, two countries

For the European Union, the text runs a separate calculation. If a product’s usual duty is under 10%, the new duty tops it up to 10%. If the usual duty reaches 10% or more, the new duty drops to zero.

In other words, outside the exemptions, 10% is the European ground level. A floor.

On August 6, the Atlantic Council judged that the regime appeared to hold to the 15% ceiling promised to Brussels. It also issued a warning. New investigations could push past it.

For Canada, the July 23 text imposes an additional 10% in duties. Except on what enters duty-free under CUSMA.

That is where the paradox sits.

Europe pays a floor. We cross duty-free.

What enters free

Fifteen percent taxed in 2025

What crosses without paying, the Congressional Research Service measures.

In 2025, the United States collected duties on about 15% of imports from Canada. By value. Some US$56 billion.

The rest entered duty-free. Probably thanks to CUSMA’s rules of origin, the report specifies.

The rest is the bulk.

Seventy-two percent heading south

Canada sold 72% of its goods exports to the United States in 2025. Those are Statistics Canada’s figures, cited in the same report. Also in 2025, 64% of the crude oil Americans imported came from Canada.

And yet that is the mass that would be slid under the European deal first. The mass that crosses customs without paying anything.

For it, the ceiling would not be a limit. It would be a new tax. With a floor at 10%, if the current European regime applied as is.

Take an auto part that meets CUSMA rules. Today it crosses with no duty. Under the European regime, it would lose its zero. Like everything that respects the rules of origin.

On what pays nothing, a ceiling becomes a tax.

The discount for the punished

Alcohol, dairy, paper, lumber

And yet the paradox has a flip side. It must be said.

Since August, some Canadian products have been paying 50%. Under Section 338. Alcohol, dairy products, paper, lumber, other goods too. That is the Congressional Research Service table, current as of September 15.

These duties make no exception for CUSMA. Since September 15, most of them even stack on top of Section 232 duties.

Ottawa retaliated on September 8, on C$27.6 billion of American goods. Tomorrow, September 29, some Canadian products will be barred from entry.

A ceiling as relief

For those goods, a 15% ceiling would be a relief. Up to thirty-five points less. On every customs bill.

That is the fact that troubles my reading. I publish it anyway.

Who would come out ahead?

A list. The products punished this summer. The bulk, meanwhile, would lose its duty-free status. The math does not reverse. It splits badly.

A discount for a list, a tax for the bulk.

No legal theory

Richard Stern’s advice

The strongest rebuttal comes from Washington itself. From a conservative group, no less.

Richard Stern is vice-president of an institute attached to Advancing American Freedom. A conservative think tank. His advice to the Post: “Don’t take it seriously.”

He goes further. The ambassador is playing the pitbull, he says. The voice of those trying to separate America from its closest allies.

Sliding Canada into the European framework does not push CUSMA aside, in his view. “There’s no real legal theory on that.”

Article 32.10, written for Beijing

Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, an analyst at the Cato Institute, points the same way.

Only one article allows the other two parties to terminate the agreement. Article 32.10. It targets a free trade pact with a non-market economy. It would not apply to a Canadian deal with the European Union.

That clause was written with China in mind, he adds. It could not be bent to fit Europe.

Gary Clyde Hufbauer, of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, confirms it. The agreement contains no provision that would strip our goods of their preferential treatment for moving closer to Brussels.

Stern is categorical. No serious court would let the president classify the European Union among non-market economies.

In law, that door is closed.

A law from 1930

A first, this summer

And yet a closed door has never slowed this file.

Section 338 dates from 1930. No president had ever expressly invoked it to impose tariffs, the Congressional Research Service writes. Donald Trump did. This summer. Against Canada.

Hufbauer says as much to the Post, bluntly. Trump does not care about previous agreements, he says, not even the ones he wrote.

All it would take, in his view, is the next executive order. An order that cites a law.

Cheese, then standards

Obregon names a possible trigger. More favourable access for European products than today, under the Canada–Europe agreement. Washington could see discrimination in it. And invoke Section 338 again.

Hufbauer adds standards. If Ottawa aligns its rules with Brussels’, they become a substitute for a tariff, he says. Section 232 would then be the simplest tool.

The rebuttal holds in law. It gives way before the tool.

That 1930 law has already been used once.

Back at the counter

The retailers’ quota

Back to the wedge under plastic.

What Canada grants its retailers for European cheese, it denies them for American dairy. That is the heart of the White House’s dairy grievance, according to the September 14 report.

The difference in treatment exists. I do not erase it.

Two panels, 2021 and 2023

It has a history. In 2021, a CUSMA panel ruled against Canada on its dairy quotas. In 2023, a second panel ruled in its favour. The same report recalls both.

In June 2025, Canada also passed a law. It bars any widening of its dairy quotas in future negotiations, the Congressional Research Service notes.

Cheese was a matter of quotas. It became a reason for tariffs. Soon a template?

Hoekstra pushes the logic one notch further. Canada is aligning with the European Union, he says. So it would make sense to put it under that deal.

The counter has not changed. What it carries has.

A wedge of cheese, an argument of state.

From 0.4 to 10 billion

One year, twenty-five times

In 2024, the United States had collected US$0.4 billion in duties on Canadian goods.

In 2025, US$10 billion.

Twenty-five times more. In one year. Those are the Congressional Research Service’s figures. And that was before the summer of Section 338.

Duty-free status itself is living on borrowed time. In July, Washington refused to renew CUSMA, which Canada and Mexico wanted to extend. Without renewal, the agreement expires in 2036.

Those who pay without signing

There is the American importer. He pays the duty at the border. There is the buyer. She often finds it in the price. The Canadian plant loses the order when the price climbs. The trucker loses a run. And the dairy farmer here is already hit at 50%.

None of them signed.

A European-style regime would extend the duty to the bulk that enters free. You can already hear the trailer doors slamming. They would open less often.

The vertigo is not in the rate. It is in the base.

Twenty-five times more, before the European regime even exists.

A summit in Montreal

Strasbourg, September 16

The real question lies elsewhere. Why this idea. Why in September.

On September 16, in Strasbourg, Ursula von der Leyen invites Canada to become the Union’s first associate member, Euronews reports. A status without precedent in the treaties.

Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič sees it as solidarity with Canada. A few hours later, Donald Trump talks about a possible hostile act. He threatens Europeans with tariffs.

A Canada–European Union summit is planned in Montreal. At the end of October.

The price before the treaty

Jamie Tronnes, of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security, sums up the mood for the Post. Anything touching the EU gets their backs up, Tronnes says.

The idea’s purpose can be read in the calendar. Set the price of the rapprochement before it exists. Before a text is negotiated. Before a Parliament ratifies it, as Carney promised in Strasbourg.

The uncertainty, meanwhile, already weighs on Canadian businesses, the Post writes. No court victory erases it.

A threat with no text gets ahead of the treaty.

More sovereign, says Carney

On the sidelines of the UN

Mark Carney explained his turn in simple terms. It was on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the Post reports.

An alliance with the European Union, he says, rests on a Canada that is becoming more sovereign.

In Strasbourg, he made clear that Canada is not seeking full membership, according to Euronews. He spoke of energy. Of critical minerals. Of defence. Of artificial intelligence.

A video or a proclamation

I admit I do not know what will become of Hoekstra’s idea. It could very well die in a video. It could very well be reborn in a proclamation.

I also admit a fatigue. Every week brings its threat. Each one demands to be read as if it were the last.

I know only this. A country that sells 72% of its goods to a single customer has the right to look for others.

Obregon puts it his own way, in the Post. This rapprochement is first of all a hedge. Against a more protectionist mood in the White House.

And yet every step toward Brussels will have its price posted in Washington. Before it is even taken.

Diversifying is not deserting.

The floor no one signed

Nothing on the record

Nothing is signed. The Post article cites no proclamation. No public notice. No statement from the Trade Representative.

There is an ambassador. Nameless negotiators. A translated number. And an office that stays silent…

The counter, on Monday

At the counter, this Monday, the European wedge costs what it cost. The beep of the register says nothing about the border. The price of the idea is not on the label. Not yet.

Will the price of our rapprochement with Europe be set at a summit in Montreal in October, or in a video from September?

The answer is not in Washington.

It is in what Ottawa signs. And in what we are prepared to pay to sign it.

A 10% floor, under a ceiling no one has signed.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Office of the US Trade Representative — Section 301 duties on 60 economies, Canada and the EU, July 23, 2026
• European Commission — US–EU joint statement and the 15% rate, August 21, 2025
• Congressional Research Service — US–Canada trade relations and tariffs in force, September 16, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• National Post — Hoekstra’s idea and the 15% European ceiling, September 28, 2026
• Euronews — the associate membership offer and Carney’s Strasbourg speech, September 17, 2026
• Atlantic Council — the new tariff wall and the Turnberry ceiling, August 6, 2026