Mexico Says It Could Retaliate in Response to Trump Tariff Threat
Hours after President-elect Donald Trump said he would impose a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico until they take steps to address drugs and migrants crossing the border, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum warned that she might retaliate with her own set of trade restrictions.
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“To one tariff will follow another in response and so on, until we put our common businesses at risk," Sheinbaum said in a Nov. 26 letter to Trump, Reuters reported. "What sense is there?" in escalating a tariff dispute, Sheinbaum added.
Canada, meanwhile, began efforts to convince Trump that it’s not a migration or drug trafficking threat. Canadian newspapers reported that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Trump after his announcement, and that Trudeau talked about the intense commercial connections between the U.S. and Canada.
"We talked about some of the challenges that we can work on together," he told reporters on his way into his Cabinet meeting in Ottawa. "It was a good call. This is something we can do, laying out the facts in constructive ways. This is a relationship we know takes a certain amount of working on and that's what we'll do."
Trump had posted Nov. 25 on Truth Social that he plans to impose the tariffs on all Mexican and Canadian goods through an executive order on Jan. 20, and the tariff will stay "until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”