President Trump has said he wanted to “help” Mexico and Canada when he decided to delay some tariffs against Canada and Mexico until early next month.
Asked why he implemented the pause, Trump told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that it was “because I wanted to help Mexico and Canada to a certain extent.”
“We’re a big, big country, and they do a lot of their business with us, whereas in our case, it’s much less significant. We do very little with Canada by comparison. And I wanted to help the American car makers until April 2nd,” Trump said in an excerpt of the interview set to air in full this weekend.
“I thought it would be a fair thing to do, and so I gave them a little bit of a break for this short period of time,” Trump said, adding it would be “for the good of the American car makers” and the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
After months of threats, Trump’s 25 percent tariffs went into effect this week against America’s neighbors to the north, marking a turning point in the relationship between the U.S. and two of its top trading partners.
But days later, Trump signed off on tariff exemptions for most imports from Canada and Mexico, delaying their implementation until April 2 — at which point the president plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on foreign nations that have duties on U.S. imports.
“April 2nd, it becomes all reciprocal. What they charge us, we charge them. It’s a big deal,” Trump said in the interview.
Despite the extension, the tariff threats are having economic impacts in the U.S. and elsewhere, and they’ve been met with strong pushback. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau slammed the tariff plan as “a very dumb thing to do.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is implementing a 25 percent tariff on electricity coming from his province to Michigan, New York and Minnesota starting on Monday, in an effort to hit back against Trump’s trade policies.
