President Trump plans to impose rigorous prices in Mexico, Canada and China on Saturday, a decision aimed at putting pressure on the largest American business partners to accept more migrants and put an end to the circulation of migrants and drugs at UNITED STATES.
Trump will put a 25% rate on Mexico and Canada goods, as well as a 10% rate on Chinese products, Karoline Leavitt, a press secretary of the White House, said on Friday.
Addressing journalists at the oval oval on Friday, Trump said that prices were a punishment for Canada, Mexico and China authorizing drugs and migrants to flood in the United States.
Trump’s decision to strike American trade partners with prices could mark the start of a disruptive and harmful trade war, which is much more disorderly than the conflict that defined Mr. Trump’s first mandate.
At the time, Trump placed prices on almost two thirds of Chinese imports, which allowed China to hit the United States with samples. Trump also imposed steel and aluminum prices, encouraging reprisals for the European Union, Mexico and Canada.
Although the prices against the allies were considered controversial, they were relatively limited. It remains to be seen exactly to which products to the new prices of Mr. Trump apply, but the president has suggested that they would be large and would cover imports from Canada and Mexico, allies close to the United States.
Trump said on Friday that he would also impose prices “absolutely” on the European Union, saying that they had “treated us so terribly”. He added that the United States would eventually put prices on chips, oil and gas-“I think on February 18,” he said-as well as samples later on steel, aluminum and copper.
Canada, Mexico and China are the three largest American trade partners, providing cars, medicines, shoes, wood, electronics, steel and many other products in the United States. Together, they represent more than a third of the goods and services imported or bought in the United States, supporting tens of millions of American jobs.
The three governments promised to respond to Mr. Trump’s samples with prices on American exportsIncluding Florida orange juice, Tennessee whiskey and Kentucky peanut butter. These three states have Republican senators representing them in the congress and voted for Trump in 2024.
Mr. Trump’s prices would immediately add a supplement to importers who bring products across the border, most of which are American companies. In closer, this could disrupt the supply chains and cause shortages, if importers choose not to pay the cost of the price.
If importers pay the price, this will probably result in higher prices for certain American products, because these companies generally transmit the cost of prices to their customers.
“Hopefully Trump’s pricing threats were only boastful and that a negotiation tool is now collapsing under the harsh reality of its determination to deploy prices as a tool to move policies from other countries to its liking “Said Eswar Prasad, professor of commercial policy at Cornell in Cornell at Cornell University.
Trump said in November that he would put the prices on Canada, Mexico and China, in order to stop the flow of migrants and drugs, especially fentanyl, in the United States.
The threat launched a race by Canadian and Mexican officials, who tried to persuade the administration to hold the prices by engaging in last -minute interviews with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and detailing the efforts they were making To control the border.
Automobile, agricultural and energy companies have all pushed the Trump administration difficult not to apply prices, and have called for an exclusions process that could give certain products an exemption.
Marcelo Ebrard, Minister of the Mexican economy, said on Friday that prices would most likely lead to shortages of specific products and that American prices on Mexican goods would increase. He described the move “a strategic error” of the Trump administration.
“The main impact is clear: millions of families in the United States should pay 25% more,” he said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, in a position on X Friday afternoon, said that “nobody – on each side of the border – wanted to see American prices on Canadian goods”. He said that “if the United States is advancing, Canada is ready with an energetic and immediate response.”
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said that China was firmly opposed to prices and that all differences or frictions are said to have dialogue. “There is no winner in a trade war or a pricing war, which serves the interests of neither team nor the world,” said the spokesperson.
Mr. Trump’s advisers had weighed down different options for prices, such as applying them to specific sectors, such as steel and aluminum, or delay their date of entry for several months, according to people familiar with Planning.
Ms. Leavitt said that the president had chosen to impose prices because the countries “allowed an unprecedented invasion of illegal fentanyl which kills American citizens, as well as illegal immigrants in our country.”
“The quantity of fentanyl that has been seized on the southern border in recent years only has the potential to kill tens of millions of Americans,” she said. “And therefore the president intends to do so.”
On both borders, the number of illegal passages has dropped sharply.
The number of unauthorized passages on the southern border in December 2023 reached nearly 250,000, crushing the border patrol and causing the closure of an entrance port. At the northern border, the flow of migrants was illegally crossed in the year 2024. Meanwhile, more than 23,000 arrests were made on migrants crossing illegally – two years before this figure is around 2 000.
The border situation has changed since then.
In December, the agents carried out around 47,000 arrests on the southern border and 510 on the northern border.
The economic benefits of the prices would depend on how they were structured, but the training effects could be wide. Canada, Mexico and the United States have been governed by a trade agreement for over 30 years, and many industries, cars and agricultural clothing has become highly integrated across North America.
Mary Lovely, a main person at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the prices would be “very expensive” for American companies.
American factories depend on contributions from the two countries, including minerals and Canada wood and Mexico automotive parts. The prices also went against the efforts that American companies have made in recent years to leave China, at the request of Trump and Biden administrations, said Ms. Belle.
According to economists from S&P Global, the automotive and electric equipment sectors in Mexico are the most exposed to disturbances if the prices were adopted, as is the treatment of minerals in Canada. In the United States, the most important risks would consist of agriculture, fishing, metals and automotive sectors.
Jonathan Samford, president of Global Business Alliance, who represents international companies, said that prices could result in costs for American consumers, slowdowns for American companies and a loss of future investment possibilities.
In his remarks from the Oval Office on Friday, Trump said that he would “probably” reduce the 10%Canadian oil rate. About 60% of the oil that the United States imports come from Canada, and around 7% come from Mexico, and experts have warned that the reduction in these flows could cause an increase in energy prices.
While the United States is the largest petroleum producer in the world, refineries must mix the lighter gross produced in domestic fields with heavier oils like Canada to make fuels like petrol and diesel .
The potential economic implications of prices are also complicate questions for the federal reserveWho always tries to fight against inflation to its target of 2%. The Fed this week had stable interest rates, after a series of reductions, in the middle of persistent inflation and questions about how the prices would take place.
In balance, most economists expect higher commercial barriers to increase the prices of American companies and households, which could lead to a temporary gust of higher inflation. The question of whether it degenerates into a more pernicious problem will depend on the question of whether the expectations of Americans concerning future inflation begin to change more significantly.
Ernie Tedeschi, Director of the Yale Budget Economy LAB, estimates that a 25% rate on all Canadian and Mexican imported goods – associated with a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports – would lead to a permanent bump of 0 , 8% in the price level, as measured by the price index of personal consumer expenses. This results in about $ 1,300 per cleaning on average. These estimates assume that targeted countries adopt reprisal measures and that the federal reserve does not act by adjusting interest rates.
Mr. Tedeschi expects the prices to this level finally shaking 0.2% reduction on the gross domestic product once the inflation is taken into account.
Mr. Trump’s main economic advisers have challenged the idea that prices fuel inflation and argued that country exporters like China would reduce their prices against higher American rates.
In the press briefing, Ms. Leavitt said that inflation had remained moderate during Mr. Trump’s first term, despite the prices imposed. And she said that the president had developed other policies that would reduce inflation, such as spending tax reductions and encouraging energy production.
Hamed Aleaziz,, Vjosa Isai And Emiliano RodrÃguez Mega Contributed reports.
