Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney will impose measures to counter the oversupply of steel and aluminium imports and may increase levies on the US, as increasingly protectionist measures are deployed in the global tariff war over crucial industrial inputs.

Carney on Thursday said Canada had imposed 100 per cent tariffs on non-US steel and aluminium imports and on July 21 would “adjust” its 25 per cent counter-tariffs on the two metals imported from the US based on talks with Washington. The move comes after US President Donald Trump’s “catastrophic” doubling of tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium earlier this month.

Fran?ois-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s finance minister, said the quotas have been launched to “stabilise the domestic market and prevent harmful trade diversion as the result of the US actions that are destabilising markets”.