Trump Threatens Tariffs on Mexico and Canada

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said yesterday successful a station connected Truth Social that he will enforce a 25 percent tariff connected each equipment entering nan U.S. from Canada and Mexico connected his first time successful agency until they extremity narcotics and migrants from crossing complete their borders pinch nan United States. In a abstracted post, he besides threatened an further 10 percent tariff connected each products from China. (New York Times)

Our Take

Trump’s iconoclastic clasp of tariffs connected imports from U.S. waste and acquisition partners is astatine this constituent good known, arsenic is nan truth that he often uses nan threat of exaggerated tariffs to summation concessions from those partners. He utilized nan maneuver a number of times during his first term, astir notably to person Canada and Mexico to renegotiate nan North American Free Trade Agreement, aliases NAFTA, yet replacing it pinch nan U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, aliases USMCA.

The truth that Trump often utilized tariffs arsenic a coercive threat successful nan past, however, does not mean waste and acquisition partners tin return it for granted that he won’t travel through. During his first term, he did truthful connected aggregate occasions, astir notably arsenic a instrumentality successful nan U.S. strategical title pinch China. But U.S. friends were not spared, either, pinch levies connected alloy and aluminum successful peculiar affecting Mexico, Canada, South Korea, Japan, nan EU and different adjacent partners.