Trump Says Tariffs on Schedule as Pause Deadline Nears
By Brett Rowland | The Center Square
(Worthy News) – President Donald Trump said Monday that his tariff plans for Mexico and Canada will move forward “on time” as the end of the 30-day pause on the 25% import duty approaches.
“We’re on time with the tariffs, and it seems like that’s moving along very rapidly,” Trump said Monday during a joint news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House. “We’ve been mistreated very badly by many countries, not just Canada and Mexico. We’ve been taken advantage of.”
On Feb. 1, Trump ended decades of duty-free trade between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada with a 25% tariff on imported goods from the two countries, with a lower 10% tariff on Canadian energy resources. Trump said he’d keep the tariffs in place until the illegal fentanyl trade subsided. He also added a 10% tariff on imports from China over that country’s role in producing the chemicals needed to make fentanyl, a powerful opioid blamed for the majority of U.S. overdose deaths.
Two days after hitting U.S. neighbors with tariffs, Trump relented after reaching 30-day deals with both Mexico and Canada.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico will immediately reinforce the border with 10,000 members of the National Guard in a move to stop drug trafficking, an issue that has been a problem for decades. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also promised to reinforce the northern U.S. border in exchange for a pause on tariffs.
China hit back with limited tariffs on U.S. imports. The Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council of China put additional tariffs on some U.S. imports while filing a complaint with the World Trade Organization.
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, governs trade between the U.S. and its northern and southern neighbors. It went into force on July 1, 2020, and Trump signed the deal. That agreement continued to allow for duty-free trading between the three countries.
U.S. goods and services trade with USMCA totaled an estimated $1.8 trillion in 2022. Exports were $789.7 billion and imports were $974.3 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with USMCA was $184.6 billion in 2022, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.