Jan. 31 (UPI) — President Donald Trump warned Canada and Mexico to expect tariffs of 25% on exports to the United States starting Saturday.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said he was following through on his campaign threat to impose border taxes on America’s neighbors immediately to the north and south of the continental United States over inflows of illegal migrants and drugs and large trade deficits.
“I’ll be putting the tariff of 25% on Canada and Mexico, and we will really have to do that because we have very big deficits with those countries,” he said.
“Those tariffs may or may not rise with time,” Trump warned.
However, he said he had yet to determine whether oil imports should be subject to the tariffs saying it depended on whether oil entering the United States was “properly priced,” adding that currently that wasn’t the case.
“Look, Mexico and Canada have never been good to us on trade. They’ve treated us very unfairly on trade, and we will be able to make that up very quickly because we don’t need the products that they have.”
Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly told the Financial Times from Washington where she was engaged in eleventh-hour lobbying that a trade war would hurt ordinary people and be counterproductive, forcing the United States into the arms of less savory partners.
“We ship oil at a discount which is, ultimately, refined in Texas. If it’s not us, it is Venezuela. There’s no other option on the table, and this administration doesn’t want to work with Venezuela,” Joly said.
About 20% of oil used in the United States originates from Canada’s deposits of heavy grades of oil, according to the Financial Times. For imported crude oil, that figure rises to 60%.
The U.S. trade deficit with Canada fell to $64.3 billion in 2023 (the last full year for which data is available) from $78.2 billion in 2022, U.S. Census figures show, but is hovering at its highest level in almost two decades.
Trump said China was also in line for some kind of levy over flows of fentanyl routed via third countries into the United States that he said were responsible for “hundreds of thousands of deaths.”
The president said during his election campaign that he would hit China with additional tariffs of 60%, but had lowered the figure to 10% by the time he entered the White House, just over a week ago.
Many Chinese goods imports are already subject to tariffs Trump imposed during his first 2017-2021 term.
The U.S. trade deficit with China fell by more than $100 billion in 2023 to $279.1 billion, from $382.1 billion in 2022, and to $127.1 billion with Mexico, compared with $152.5 in 2022.
Canada and Mexico have both tried to calm the waters by stressing steps they are implementing to address U.S. concerns but have warned they would retaliate to the imposition of tariffs.
Experts have warned tariffs would likely feed through to higher prices for U.S. consumers and could be inflationary but others warn any trade war would see Canada and Mexico suffer hits to their GDP of many magnitudes greater than the United States.
Analysts have also suggested tariffs are merely a tool Trump is using to negotiate over bilateral issues like border security and for terms of trade that are more advantageous to the United States.
The Chinese government shut down for the lunar new year, but Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexianga said last week that Beijing was seeking a “win-win” solution to the situation in line with its strategic economic goal of pursuing export growth.
