President Donald Trump decided to postpone his promise of implementing a 25 % tariff on all goods imported from Canada and Mexico, his latest effort to curb illegal immigration and the flow of fentanyl.
“We’re thinking in terms of 25 % on Mexico and Canada because they’re allowing vast numbers of people ” across the border, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday night. “ I think we’ll do it Feb. 1. ”
During his opening target, Trump said, “Instead of taxing our citizens to promote other countries, we did tax and income foreign countries to strengthen our citizens. ”
But, Trump did not include his 25 % tax plan, which he announced last year, in his kills of executive orders Monday.
Otherwise, Trump signed an executive actions that strategies for the Commerce, Treasury, and the United Trade Representative to check the source of America’s trade deficits with international countries. He is also looking to make an “External Profit Service ” to collect taxes and to emblem unfair trade practices.
Trump threatened both Canada and Mexico with a 25 % tax in an effort to obtain foreign officials to crack down on illegal immigration and the movement of medication from their places into the United States.
In 2024, U. S. Border Patrol had a million contacts with illegal border crossers at the U. S. -Mexico frontier, and 22,369 contacts along the northern border. The U. S. borders services also seized about 20,600 pounds of fentanyl at the southwestern boundary and 50 pounds at the northern border, data show.
When Trump made the 25 % tax statement last year, it prompted French Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has since announced his resignation, to attend Trump, then-president-elect, at Mar-a-Lago to relieve Trump’s problems on illegal border crossings. However, Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo promised retribution, warning that Trump’s business conflict would cause job loss and prices for both countries.
“One price will follow another in answer and so on, until we put our common firms at hazard, ” Sheinbaum said in a text to Trump.
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However, both Mexico and Canada, in response to Trump’s tariff threats, have been making strides to crack down on immigration and the flow of illicit narcotics. Mexico is reducing its imports from China and has seized a record-breaking number of fentanyl pills. Meanwhile, Canada has presented a billion-dollar plan to combat problems along the northern border.
Trump’s tariff threats come as the three North American countries are set to negotiate the terms of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in 2026.
