As Trump tariff threat looms, N.B. premier on ‘preparing for the worst’

New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt said she doesn't want to 'cut off our nose to spite our face' by taking actions that would hurt the province.

New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt says “everything is on the table” in responding to U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threat, but cautioned she won’t take actions that could hurt her province.

Her comments came as Ontario Premier Doug Ford warned his province could cut off energy exports to the U.S. in response to the proposed tariffs.

Asked by The West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson about Ford’s proposal, Holt stressed certain actions could cause “significant trouble” for the province, but they were still “preparing for the worst” with the president-elect’s actions.

“We don’t want to cut off our nose to spite our face,” she said. “There would be significant trouble caused to New Brunswickers if we stopped selling products into the U.S.”

She noted Trump’s tariffs would already make exporting products to the U.S. more challenging, but “cutting off” the province’s largest customer, such as the petroleum products it sends to the U.S. would create more issues.

According to a report by the New Brunswick government released in July, the U.S. received 92.1 per cent of the province’s exports in 2023.

In her interview, Holt said her government was doing analysis to determine how they could retaliate with the least impact to New Brunswick but most to the U.S., and in particular the places the “Trump administration is most sensitive to.”

“We’re looking at all of the different things that we import in from the U.S., as well as the critical things that we send to them to prepare a strong retaliatory strategy that we will have ready in case and we hope we won’t have to use it,” Holt said.