U.S. president signed an executive order in the Oval Office on Wednesday

U.S. President Donald Trump is dealing another tariff blow to Canada, signing an executive order on Wednesday that will hit all non-U.S.-made autos with hefty import levies.

Trump said the United States will be applying a 25 per cent tariff on those imports, but it’s not clear when they would apply.

The president said the auto tariffs will kick in on April 2 but suggested they could start at a base rate of 2.5 per cent.

“What we’re going to be doing is a 25 per cent tariff on all cars that are not made in the United States. If they’re made in the United States, there is absolutely no tariff. We’ll start off with a 2.5 per cent base, which is what we were at, and we’ll go to 25 per cent,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Autos are the second-largest Canadian export after oil — and by far the most lucrative manufactured product that Canada sells to the world, linked to hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs.