U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hold a meeting on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada, June 8, 2018. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO)

By Christopher Guly

QUEBEC CITY, June 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to hear an earful from the other six leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) on his administration's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports on Friday as they begin their summit in the Canadian French-speaking province of Quebec.

"It appears to be one against six since none of the other countries took aggressive action against the U.S. and it is the U.S. attacking its own allies," said Perrin Beatty, president and chief executive officer of the 200,000-member Canadian Chamber of Commerce, in an interview.

The head of Canada's largest business association is at a nearby media center looking for signs as to whether Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Japan -- and the European Union (EU) as a participant -- can convince the United States to rethink its anti-trade strategy.

"What we have is a president who has undermined the trust of the other six leaders around the table, and that will make it much more difficult to have a common front on other issues as well," said Beatty, a former senior Canadian cabinet minister.

In response to the U.S. import tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, Canada followed the EU's lead and threatened to impose its own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods.

Canada has announced import duties against U.S. steel and aluminum as well as 71 categories of consumer and industrial goods that target the home states of prominent Republican members of Congress, such as fruit jams from Wisconsin -- the home state of House Speaker Paul Ryan -- and whiskies from Kentucky, -- the home state of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

"We are hurt and we're insulted," said Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland in a recent CNN interview on the U.S. tariffs against Canada.

Beatty credited the Canadian government with crafting the tariffs -- which would come into effect on July 1 if the Trump administration didn't withdraw its import taxes -- to "maximize the impact within certain regions of the U.S. while minimizing the impact on Canada, and trying to find, wherever possible, a Canadian or other supplier to provide the products."

However, he said Canada's business community has a "real concern" with how Trump is attacking what should be the goal of having "free and open" trade.

"We've seen a succession of measures taken by the president directed at close allies and friends of the U.S. that are destructive, and that will inflict serious and direct damage on the U.S. economy as well as its partners' economies," said Beatty. "Yet he seems oblivious to the consequences."

A tariff the U.S. Commerce Department imposed earlier this year on Canadian newsprint has increased costs for newspaper publishers and now imperils the fate of local papers across the United States, Beatty said.

The Trump administration has also slapped tougher tariffs on Canada's softwood lumber industry, but that has resulted in driving up the cost of housing and furniture in the United States and making American furniture manufacturers less competitive, Beatty said.

The trade war could heat up further if Trump next targets Canada's auto industry, which exports about 80 percent of the vehicles it manufactures to the United States, or Canada's dairy industry, based on the president's recent tweet that "Canada has treated our Agricultural business and Farmers very poorly for a very long period of time."

All of these actions further erode any hope that the North American Free Trade Agreement, currently under renegotiation by the United States, Canada and Mexico, will survive, according to Beatty.

"President Trump has made it clear that he is less interested in having an agreement when the United States wins than in having one where everyone loses," he said.

"It is a great irony that he casts himself as a businessman. In business, whether you are a customer or a supplier, you want to ensure that both have a fair deal that is mutually beneficial and you never want a situation where someone feels victimized."

"Yet this seems to be President Trump's strategy. He sees trade as a zero-sum game in which the United States can advance only if others lose," he said.

Beatty said he has never before witnessed such rancor directed from a U.S. government to its Canadian counterpart since coming to Ottawa in 1972 when he was elected to the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament for the then-Progressive Conservative Party at the age of 22.

"I have never seen an instance like this where doing trade with each other is a bad thing - particularly when Canada is a close trading partner with the U.S., and has the closest relationship with the U.S. militarily, diplomatically, culturally and economically than with any other country in the world," he said.

Yet the U.S. claims that Canada threatens its national security by imposing these new steel and aluminum tariffs, said Beatty, who also has served as Canada's minister of national defense.

"When I held that post, I spent a great deal of time ensuring that our shared North American industrial base was strong, and that Canada was able to supply steel and aluminum to the United States to strengthen its national security -- not to undermine it."

Trump's attacks on trade are not only "harming the economy of the United States," but also "the people who voted for him - who shop at Walmart, who are trying to pay off their mortgage, and who will see the costs of housing, furniture and other goods going up while their jobs will be in jeopardy," said Beatty.

He said that the American president's actions also diminish the "foundation of trust" between the U.S. and Canada, which President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, in whose cabinet Beatty served, heightened by signing the initial Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement in 1988.

"When the U.S. administration attacks its allies in this way on trade, it destroys trust and makes it more difficult to collaborate in other areas - from military to diplomatic to economic issues," said Beatty. "You can't just poison part of the well."