Ontario Premier Doug Ford challenged President Trump on Saturday to lift U.S. softwood lumber tariffs — which currently exceed 45 percent on Canadian producers — if the White House wants Canada to ship wood south for the forest-management work Trump says could prevent the wildfire smoke now choking more than 100 million Americans. The counter-demand came after Trump posted on Truth Social Friday calling Canada's handling of its wildfires "willful negligence" and threatening to add the "incalculable cost" of smoke pollution to existing tariffs on Canadian goods — a threat the White House has offered no legal mechanism to carry out.
With more than 900 active wildfires burning across Canada Saturday — roughly 200 of them in Ontario, 81 still out of control as of Ford's Friday press conference in Toronto — the smoke has set all-time air pollution records in Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago over the past four days and kept air quality at Code Red or worse across a corridor stretching from Minnesota to Washington, D.C. A brief window of relief may come Saturday afternoon as a cold front pushes across the Mid-Atlantic, but The Weather Channel warned Friday that a third wave of Canadian smoke is forecast to return to the Great Lakes as early as Sunday.
