Carney zeroed in on Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves, who has publicly cheered those same tariffs. Goncalves called Trump's 50% steel tariffs "a necessary step" to protect American steelmakers, even as his own company's Canadian subsidiary cut jobs citing the fallout from that policy.
Carney's comments put a spotlight on the tangled cross-border ownership in North America's steel industry. A U.S. Company can champion tariffs meant to shield American jobs while its own foreign workforce absorbs the damage.
For Stelco employees in Canada, the message from their own government is blunt. The company that laid them off is run by an executive who publicly backed the trade policy blamed for their job losses. Carney's accusation signals rising tension between Ottawa and Washington over how the tariffs are rippling through companies operating on both sides of the border.
Nobody at Cleveland-Cliffs has yet answered the awkward question the layoffs raise, how a CEO can praise tariffs with one hand while cutting Canadian jobs tied to them with the other.