U.S. imposes 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products

BREAKING: US imposes 50% tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian goods, taking effect Saturday after last-ditch trade talks failed.

Fifty percent tariffs on twenty billion dollars of Canadian goods, and they're live as of today. The last-ditch talks failed, and Washington pulled the trigger anyway.

Think about that number for a second. Fifty percent isn't a nudge, it's a wall. This is the kind of levy you put on an adversary, not on the country you share the longest border on earth with. You can see the White House here, where this decision landed on a Saturday, which tells you nobody wanted a full news cycle chewing on it.

And on the other side of that border, Ottawa has already promised to hit back with tariffs of its own. So both economies are now taxing each other's goods, and the people actually paying are shoppers and factories on both sides of the line.

Twenty billion dollars in trade just got fifty percent more expensive overnight. That's where we are.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.