Wildfire smoke drifting south over American cities should be added to the tariffs Canada already pays, US President Donald Trump has declared, pulling forest management into a trade fight already taxing Canadian softwood lumber at 34.83 per cent. That is according to Trump, who issued the threat on Friday, accusing Canada of failing to maintain “their Forests, and Brush therein” and leaving the United States “unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air”.
“This is Willful Negligence, and becoming a yearly occurrence,” Trump wrote, claiming the smoke is costing the United States billions of dollars and that Canada “has refused to engage in basic Forest Management and Debris Removal”. The President said he would phone Prime Minister Mark Carney to find out what Ottawa intends to do, without explaining how any smoke cost would be calculated or applied.
The accusation aligns with a doctrine Trump has preached at home, telling a June 2025 wildfire briefing that the United States must take Europe’s lead and clean its forest floors to stop the fires, months after ordering millions of hectares of federal forest to be freed up for timber production.
Any additional duties would stack on top of duties that have already cut Canadian softwood shipments by 24 per cent, on volumes the National Association of Home Builders estimates add US$10,000 to the cost of every new home. Canada named the lumber measures among the tariffs it wants rolled back at the CUSMA joint review on 1 July, with the US Department of Commerce’s final determination due in August.
Ottawa’s season data complicates the yearly charge, with the 9 July federal update recording 3,137 fires and 1.4 million hectares burned, below the five-year average and less than a third of the 4,614,713 hectares lost by the same point in 2025. The days since have run the other way, with counts climbing through 896 active fires on Friday to 955 by Saturday afternoon, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford reporting 81 fires out of control in his province.
“Fighting climate change is the responsibility of all countries, including the United States,” Carney told reporters, in the Prime Minister’s first public reply to the threat. Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience Eleanor Olszewski answered within hours, with a Friday evening statement citing the $12 billion Canada has invested in forest sustainability and fire prevention since 2020, and a shared firefighting history she said both countries benefit from.
“That’s what neighbours do, right?” Ford said on Saturday, counting the Canadian water bombers and hydro crews that fought fires in California, Georgia, and South Carolina last year, in a reply that branded the tariff threat unacceptable. In the same week, a Royal Canadian Air Force crew flew 11 Minnesota teenagers and four camp staff out of a burning Ontario provincial park, the help the Premier said Canadians would give “without hesitation” were the roles reversed.
It comes as the fires clouding the Midwest burn on both sides of the border, with Minnesota’s July Lightning Event charring 77,000 acres since dry thunderstorms ignited it on 7 July, most of them inside the federally managed Superior National Forest. Three of its fires, led by Bear Trap and Thumb, have crossed into Canada, where the Minnesota Incident Command System reports 24,000 acres burning, and the Boundary Waters wilderness, now under a state of emergency with the National Guard in the field.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin backed the President within hours, saying in a Friday post of his own that the agency is in contact with Canada’s leadership and will press for the fires to be put out “as fast as possible”. Hours after the tariff threat, The New York Times reported that the same administration has spent recent months dismantling the government laboratories that research wildfire smoke and its effects.
Fire now accounts for more of the world’s untouched forest than timber harvesting, overtaking it this month as the leading driver of intact forest loss, with boreal North America shedding 1.87 million hectares of unbroken forest each year since 2020. The recurrence Trump complains of is real enough, with Canadian wildfires burning through 5.3 million hectares, making 2025 the country’s second-worst fire year on record.
New York has choked on this haze before, with Quebec’s fires in June 2023 handing the city the worst air of any major city on the planet, readings above 350 on the air quality index that officials said the five boroughs had not endured since the 1960s.
Whether the final is played under the same haze now depends on the weekend weather, with air quality alerts triggered across the Northeast ahead of Sunday’s decider at MetLife Stadium, and National Weather Service forecasters saying rain and storms could clear some northeastern air while dangerous pollution holds over the Midwest.
