US President Donald Trump stressed this Thursday that, in the current circumstances, 25% tariffs will be activated on March 4 for Mexico and Canada and an additional 10% for China to what he considered insufficient efforts of the three countries for combating the entry of fentanil in the US.
Trump wrote first in the social truth network that the measures would go into force on that date – and not on April 2, as he mentioned on Wednesday – and then reaffirmed his position during an appearance before the media in the Oval Office in the company of the first British minister, Keir Starmer, visiting Washington today.
Without advances in the fight against fentanyl
When asked in the presidential office about whether he has detected progress to exempt Mexico and Canada from the tariff increase, he replied that “not at all, not in drugs”, although there have been improvements in terms of irregular border crossings, the fight against illegal immigration being the other requirement that has demanded to Mexico and Ottawa to cancel the application of tariffs.
“Drugs continue to reach our country and kill hundreds of thousands of people … drugs come from Mexico; Many of them also from China, not all, but many come from China, ”Trump said.
Trump abounded in the message he published Thursday on his social Truth Network, in which he said that on March 4, next Tuesday, the new tariffs to Mexico and Canada will enter into force if there are no better in the fight against fentanyl traffic, a drug that is wreaking havoc in the US population with tens of thousands of overdose annual overdose.
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In his opinion, with these tariff measures it will eventually see that “drugs stop.”
The president added that the 10% tariffs to China announced this morning will be added to the increase of the beginning of this month of another 10%.
Message in Truth Social
Hours before, in a social Truth post, Trump said drugs are still entering the United States from Mexico and Canada “at very high and unacceptable levels. A large percentage of these drugs, many of them in the form of a fentanyl, are made or are provided by China. ”
“We cannot allow this scourge to continue damaging the US and, therefore, until it stops or is limited in a serious way, the proposed tariffs scheduled to enter into force on March 4, of course, will come into force as planned,” he wrote in an apparent attempt to clarify what was said by him on Wednesday.
Lee: China tariffs will rise to 20% from March 4: Trump
During the first meeting of his cabinet held on the eve Trump seemed to indicate that all the tariffs planned by their administration were postponed to April 2.
Trump also added today in Truth Social that at the beginning of April will be launched “the second reciprocal tariffs”, which include customs rates for the whole steel and aluminum that enter the US, as well as for cars, semiconductors or pharmaceutical products.
Uncertainty for consumers and markets
Uncertainty regarding the implementation of commercial policy by Trump has affected both consumers and markets, with the main indicators of Wall Street chaining four days of losses this week.
The New York bag opened today in green, but after Trump’s words and the Dow Jones of Industrials and the S&P 500 they returned to be unable to recover a clear ascending path.
Similarly, the Mexican Stock Exchange (BMV), after also opening positively, lost more than 2% after Trump’s statements.
Possible tariff exemption for the United Kingdom
Trump hinted during his appearance with Starmer that London could get rid of customs rates, unlike the European Union (EU), which he has threatened to impose tariffs from April.
“We are here for a different reason, we are talking about a very different place. This is a place (the United Kingdom) in which I have investments, ”Trump explained, to then enumerate golf courses that it owns in Scotland and in the Republic of Ireland, which is not really British territory.
Starmer also intervened to say that bilateral trade is “fair and balanced”, with “some American surplus” (11.9 billion dollars in favor of the North American country in 2024), and that therefore the situation is “different” with respect to the EU, which had a commercial surplus of 235.6 billion dollars with the US last year.
With EFE information
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