Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada won’t respond immediately to the Trump administration’s doubling of steel and aluminum tariffs, and indicated that officials are in “intensive discussions” about the trade relationship between the countries.

“Those discussions are progressing,” the Canadian leader told reporters Wednesday morning in Ottawa. The government will “take some time” to consider its reaction to the US’s latest move to hike tariffs on the foreign-produced metals to 50%, he said.

Dominic LeBlanc, the point person in Carney’s cabinet for US trade talks, was in Washington on Tuesday to meet with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — the second trip he has made to the US capital in the past two weeks.

Carney called the higher tariffs “unjustified, they’re illegal, they’re bad for American workers, bad for American industry, and of course for Canadian industry as well.”

Still, his pause on retaliation represents a shift in approach from his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, who typically responded to any new Trump tariffs by announcing matching counter-tariffs on US-made goods right away. In March, Trudeau’s government hit back with 25% tariffs on about C$60-billion ($43.9-billion) worth of American products, including a wide range of steel and aluminum items.

Carney has since exempted some of those products from counter-tariffs. In April, the government announced a six-month pause on the import taxes for some products used in manufacturing and in critical sectors such as health care and public safety.

But Carney is already facing pressure in Canada to retaliate quickly against President Donald Trump’s new tariff hike. Ontario Premier Doug Ford called on the national government to raise its counter-tariffs, while the country’s largest private sector union said it wants to see “immediate and forceful” action.

“These tariffs are killing investment in our steel, aluminum, and auto sectors, and we are already seeing the consequences in lost jobs and economic instability,” said Unifor president Lana Payne.

Canada is the largest foreign supplier of steel to the US, representing about 6% of the country’s consumption in 2024, according to MEPS International. It has a much larger footprint in aluminum, and is the biggest foreign seller of aluminum consumed in the US.