President Trump on Thursday said he plans to follow through on Saturday on his threat to impose 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada.
“We’ll be announcing the tariffs on Canada and Mexico for a number of reasons,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. He cited the influx of migrants at the southern border, the flow of fentanyl into the United States and the trade deficit the U.S. has with its neighbors.
“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 said. “Those tariffs may or may not rise with time.”
Trump added that he would decide Thursday night whether to include oil among the items subject to tariffs.
“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.
“Look, Mexico and Canada have never been good to us on trade,” he continued. “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.”
The action would make good on a threat Trump first made in the final days of the 2024 campaign, when he threatened to impose a tariff of 25 percent on all imports from Mexico, which is the top trade partner with the U.S., unless the Mexican government curbed the flow of migrants at the southern border.
He later expanded that threat to include Canada and China.
Mexico and Canada are two of the top trading partners with the United States, and experts have warned that tariffs could lead to increased prices for American consumers for certain goods.
But experts have also said that the economies of Mexico and Canada would likely suffer more in the long-term from an extended trade war.
