The leaders of both Mexico and Canada have said they will retaliate in some manner.
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he will likely go ahead with placing 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada starting Feb. 1.
“I’ll be putting the tariff of 25 percent on Canada and Mexico, and we will really have to do that because we have very big deficits with those countries,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “Those tariffs may or may not rise with time.”
He added that the administration will impose the tariffs “for a number of reasons” including the influx of illegal immigrants at the U.S.–Mexico border, fentanyl trafficking, and the trade deficit with Mexico and Canada.
Trump had announced those tariffs days before he was elected in November. After his inauguration, he said they would go into effect starting Saturday.
A decision on whether to make an exception for oil imports would come on Thursday night, Trump said.
“We may or may not. We’re going to make that determination, probably tonight, on oil. Because they send us oil, we’ll see. It depends on what the price is. If the oil is properly priced, if they treat us properly, which they don’t,” Trump said.
Elaborating more, he said that “Mexico and Canada have never been good to us on trade” and have “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.”
For decades, the United States, Canada, and Mexico have been joint parties to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and later the U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), two trade agreements.
Trump on Thursday mentioned a 10 percent additional tariff on China that he had announced last year to penalize the country for allowing the manufacturing of fentanyl precursor chemicals. However, he was not firm on proceeding with that action.
“China is going to end up paying a tariff also for that and we’re in the process of doing that … we’ll make that determination what it’s going to be,” he told reporters.
The leaders of Mexico and Canada have said that their countries would retaliate against the United States in some manner over the tariffs, while Ontario Premier Doug Ford has said that his province could cut off energy supplies to the United States in response.
“Every part of our country would be impacted by the potential U.S. tariffs. We all know the stakes here. We’re all working around the clock to prevent them—and we’re all ready to issue a strong, national response if we need to,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Wednesday in a post on social media platform X.
Earlier this week, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she does not believe Trump will go through with the 25 percent tariffs but made allusions to what her government could do. Around 80 percent of Mexican exports go to the United States, the world’s biggest economy.
“We don’t think it’s going to happen,” Sheinbaum said at her regular morning press conference. “And if it does happen, we also have our plan.”
Reuters contributed to this report.