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(AP) — President-elect Donald Trump threatened on Monday to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China as soon as he takes office as part of his effort to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs. He said he would impose a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% tariff on goods from China, as one of his first executive orders.
The tariffs, if implemented, could dramatically raise prices for American consumers on everything from gas to automobiles to agricultural products. The U.S. is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China, and Canada as its top three suppliers, according to the most recent U.S. Census data.
Trump made the threats in a pair of posts on his Truth Social site in which he railed against an influx of illegal migrants, even though southern border apprehensions have been hovering near four-year lows.
“On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,” he wrote, complaining that “thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before,” even though violent crime is down from pandemic highs.
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long-simmering problem. We hereby demand that they use this power,” he went on, “and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”
A senior Canadian government official said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump spoke after Trump’s posts. The two spoke about the border and trade and had a good conversation, the official said. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Trump also turned his ire on China, saying he has “had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States – But to no avail.”
“Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America,” he wrote.
It is unclear whether Trump will actually go through with the threats or if he is using them as a negotiating tactic before he returns to the White House in the new year.
Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Scott Bessent — who if confirmed, would be one of several officials responsible for imposing tariffs on other countries — has on several occasions said tariffs are a means of negotiation.
He wrote in a Fox News op-ed last week, before his nomination, that tariffs are “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign policy objectives. Whether it is getting allies to spend more on their own defense, opening foreign markets to U.S. exports, securing cooperation on ending illegal immigration and interdicting fentanyl trafficking, or deterring military aggression, tariffs can play a central role.”
Trump won the election in large part due to voter frustration over inflation, but his threatened tariffs pose the risk of pushing prices even higher for food, autos, and other goods. If inflationary pressures increase, the Federal Reserve might need to keep its benchmark interest rates higher.
Trump’s threats come as arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico have been falling. The most recent U.S. numbers for October show arrests remain near four-year lows, with U.S. Border Patrol making 56,530 arrests in October, less than one-third of the tally from October last year.
Meanwhile, arrests for illegally crossing the border from Canada have been rising over the past two years. The Border Patrol made 23,721 arrests between October 2023 and September 2024, compared with 10,021 the previous 12 months. More than 14,000 of those arrested on the Canadian border were Indian — more than 10 times the number two years ago.
Last week, a jury convicted two men on charges related to human smuggling for their roles in an international operation that led to the deaths of a family of Indian migrants who froze while trying to cross the Canada-U.S. border during a 2022 blizzard.
Much of America’s fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico. Border seizures of the drug rose sharply under President Joe Biden, and U.S. officials tallied about 21,900 pounds (12,247 kilograms) of fentanyl seized in the 2024 government budget year, compared with 2,545 pounds (1,154 kilograms) in 2019 when Trump was president.
If Trump were to move forward with the threatened tariffs, the new taxes would pose an enormous challenge to the economies of Canada and Mexico, in particular.
The Canadian dollar weakened sharply in foreign exchange markets immediately following Trump’s post.
During Trump’s first term, his move to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, and reports that he was considering a 25% tariff on the Canadian auto sector were considered an existential threat in Canada. Canada is one of the most trade-dependent countries in the world, and 75% of Canada’s exports go to the U.S.
The tariffs would also throw into doubt the reliability of the 2020 trade deal brokered in large part by Trump with Canada and Mexico, the USMCA, which replaced NAFTA and is up for review in 2026.
It’s unclear from Trump’s social media post how he would legally apply tariff hikes on those two pivotal U.S. trade partners, but the 2020 deal allows for national security exceptions.
Trump transition team officials did not immediately respond to questions about what authority he would use, what he would need to see to prevent the tariffs from being implemented and how they would impact prices in the U.S.
When Trump imposed higher tariffs during his first term in office, other countries responded with retaliatory tariffs of their own. Canada, for instance, announced billions of new duties in 2018 against the U.S. in a tit-for-tat response to new taxes on Canadian steel and aluminum.
Many of the U.S. products were chosen for their political rather than economic impact. For example, Canada imports just $3 million worth of yogurt from the U.S. annually and most of it comes from one plant in Wisconsin, the home state of then-Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan. That product was hit with a 10% duty.
The Canadian government, in a joint statement from Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Public Safety Minister Dominic Leblanc, emphasized the close relationship between the two countries and said they will discuss the border and vast economic ties with the incoming administration.
“Canada places the highest priority on border security and the integrity of our shared border. Our relationship today is balanced and mutually beneficial, particularly for American workers,” the statement read.
Freeland, who chairs a special Cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations to address concerns about another Trump presidency, has said the president-elect’s promise to launch a mass deportation and concern that that could lead to an influx of migrants to Canada, is a top focus of the committee.
A second senior Canadian official had said before Trump’s posts that Canadian officials were expecting him to issue executive orders on trade and the border as soon as he assumed office. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department and Economy Department also had no immediate reaction to Trump’s statements. Normally such weighty issues are handled by the president at her morning press briefings.
Last week, a senior Chinese commerce official said higher tariffs on Chinese exports would backfire by raising prices for consumers. Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen also said China can manage the impact of such “external shocks.”
___ Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Mark Stevenson in Mexico City, and Fatima Hussein, Josh Boak and Didi Tang in Washington contributed to this report.
Donald Trump’s personnel choices for his new Cabinet and White House reflect his signature positions on immigration and trade but also a range of viewpoints and backgrounds that raise questions about what ideological anchors might guide his Oval Office encore.
With a rapid assembly of his second administration — faster than his effort eight years ago — the former and incoming president has combined television personalities, former Democrats, a wrestling executive, and traditionally elected Republicans into a mix that makes clear his intentions to impose tariffs on imported goods and crack down on illegal immigration but leaves open a range of possibilities on other policy pursuits.
“The president has his two big priorities and doesn’t feel as strongly about anything else — so it’s going to be a real jump ball and zigzag,” predicted Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence during Trump’s 2017-21 term. “In the first administration, he surrounded himself with more conservative thinkers, and the results showed we were mostly rowing in the same direction. This is more eclectic.”
Indeed, Secretary of State-designee Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who has pilloried authoritarian regimes around the world, is in line to serve as top diplomat to a president who praises autocratic leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon has been tapped to sit at the Cabinet table as a pro-union labor secretary alongside multiple billionaires, former governors, and others who oppose making it easier for workers to organize themselves.
The prospective treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, wants to cut deficits for a president who promised more tax cuts, better veterans services and no rollbacks of the largest federal outlays: Social Security, Medicare, and national defense.
Abortion rights supporter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is Trump’s choice to lead the Health and Human Services Department, which Trump’s conservative Christian base has long targeted as an agency where the anti-abortion movement must wield more influence.
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich allowed that members of Trump’s slate will not always agree with the president and certainly not with one another. But he minimized the potential for irreconcilable differences: “A strong Cabinet, by definition, means you’re going to have people with different opinions and different skills.”
That kind of unpredictability is at the core of Trump’s political identity. He is the erstwhile reality TV star who already upended Washington once and is returning to power with sweeping, sometimes contradictory promises that convinced voters, especially those in the working class, that he will do it all again.
“What Donald Trump has done is reorient political leadership and activism to a more entrepreneurial spirit,” Gingrich said.
There’s also plenty of room for conflict, given the breadth of Trump’s 2024 campaign promises and his pattern of cycling through Cabinet members and national security personnel during his first term.
This time, Trump has pledged to impose tariffs on foreign goods, end illegal immigration and launch a mass deportation force, goose U.S. energy production and exact retribution on people who opposed — and prosecuted — him. He’s added promises to cut taxes, raise wages, end wars in Israel and Ukraine, streamline government, protect Social Security and Medicare, help veterans and squelch cultural progressivism.
Trump alluded to some of those promises in recent weeks as he completed his proposed roster of federal department heads and named top White House staff members. But his announcements skimmed over any policy paradoxes or potential complications.
Bessent has crusaded as a deficit hawk, warning that the ballooning national debt, paired with higher interest rates, drives consumer inflation. But he also supports extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that added to the overall debt and annual debt service payments to investors who buy Treasury notes.
A hedge-fund billionaire, Bessent built his wealth in world markets. Yet, generally speaking, he’s endorsed Trump’s tariffs. He rejects the idea that they feed inflation and instead frames tariffs as one-time price adjustments and leverage to achieve U.S. foreign policy and domestic economic aims.
Trump, for his part, declared that Bessent would “help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States.”
Chavez-DeRemer, Trump promised, “will achieve historic cooperation between Business and Labor that will restore the American Dream for Working Families.”
Trump did not address the Oregon congresswoman’s staunch support for the PRO-Act, a Democratic-backed measure that would make it easier for workers to unionize, among other provisions. That proposal passed the House when Democrats held a majority. But it’s never had measurable Republican support in either chamber on Capitol Hill, and Trump has never made it part of his agenda.
When Trump named Kennedy as his pick for health secretary, he did not mention the former Democrat’s support for abortion rights. Instead, Trump put the focus on Kennedy’s intention to take on the U.S. agriculture, food processing, and drug manufacturing sectors.
The vagaries of Trump’s foreign policy stand out, as well. Trump’s choice for national security adviser, Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, offered mixed messages Sunday when discussing the Russia-Ukraine war, which Trump claims never would have started had he been president because he would have prevailed on Putin not to invade his neighboring country.
Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Waltz repeated Trump’s concerns over recent escalations, which include President Joe Biden approving sending antipersonnel mines to Ukrainian forces.
“We need to restore deterrence, restore peace, and get ahead of this escalation ladder, rather than responding to it,” Waltz said. But in the same interview, Waltz declared the mines necessary to help Ukraine “stop Russian gains” and said he’s working “hand in glove” with Biden’s team during the transition.
Meanwhile, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, the top intelligence post in government, is an outspoken defender of Putin and Syrian President Bashar al Assad, a close ally of Russia and Iran.
Perhaps the biggest wildcards of Trump’s governing constellation are budget-and-spending advisers Russell Vought, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Vought led Trump’s Office of Management and Budget in his first term and is in line for the same post again. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, and Ramaswamy, a mega-millionaire venture capitalist, lead an outside advisory panel known as the “Department of Government Efficiency.”
The latter effort is a quasi-official exercise to identify waste. It carries no statutory authority, but Trump can route Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s recommendations to official government pathways, including via Vought.
A leading author of Project 2025, the conservative movement’s blueprint for a hard-right turn in U.S. government and society, Vought envisions OMB not just as an influential office to shape Trump’s budget proposals for Congress but a power center of the executive branch, “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.”
As for how Trump might navigate differences across his administration, Gingrich pointed to Chavez-DeRemer.
“He might not agree with her on union issues, but he might not stop her from pushing it herself,” Gingrich said of the PRO-Act. “And he will listen to anybody. If you convince him, he absolutely will spend presidential capital.”
Short said other factors are more likely to influence Trump: personality and, of course, loyalty.
Vought “brought him potential spending cuts” in the first administration, Short said, “that Trump wouldn’t go along with.” This time, Short continued, “maybe Elon and Vivek provide backup,” giving Vought the imprimatur of two wealthy businessmen.
“He will always calculate who has been good to him,” Short said. “You already see that: The unions got the labor secretary they wanted, and Putin and Assad got the DNI (intelligence chief) they wanted. … This is not so much a team-of-rivals situation. I think it’s going to look a lot like a reality TV show.”