25 % tariffs entered into force on Tuesday to Mexico and Canada imposed by the Trump administration after the president said there was no space for an agreement to avoid those measures.
The United States imposed on Tuesday new tariffs of 25 % on exports of its two largest commercial partners, Mexico and Canada, despite the fact that these nations claim to have made progress in the reduction of irregular migration and the flow of illicit drugs through the border, as President Donald Trump had demanded.
The American leader first announced tariffs a month ago and quickly suspended them after Canadian and Mexican leaders promised to take action.
The president said at a press conference on Monday afternoon that there is no space for an agreement that avoids the imposition of these tariffs and confirmed that rates would be 25 % for both Mexico and Canada. “There is no room for Mexico or Canada,” he said.
“What they have to do is build their car plants, and other things, in the United States, and in that case they have no tariffs,” Trump said during an announcement about an investment of 100,000 million dollars in the United States of a Taiwanese company of semiconductors.
The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that his country “will not let this unjustified decision be unanswered,” and announced that 25 % tariffs would impose to US products worth 155,000 million dollars.
Trudeau said that Canada has sent personnel and equipment to the border to stop the Fentanyl flow to the United States.
“Thanks to this work, in collaboration with the United States, Fentanyl seizures from Canada have decreased 97 percent between December 2024 and January 2025, up to a minimum close to zero of 0.03 pounds seized by the Office of Customs and Border Protection of the United States,” he said.
Trudeau said that Trump's decision “will disturb an incredibly successful commercial relationship” and that tariffs will make Americans pay more for products such as groceries, gasoline and cars.
Trump indicated that, in the case of Mexico, he responds to the “great amounts of fentanilo that have arrived” in the US.
Earlier on Monday, during her morning press conference, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, said her government has plans in response to the imposition of these tariffs.
Trump considers agreement with Argentina
The US president, on the other hand, said he would consider the possibility of reaching a free trade agreement with Argentina.
When asked about his relationship with his Argentine counterpart Javier Milei, Trump said he is “a great leader” who is “doing a great job” and that “things would see” for an agreement.
Milei recently visited the US capital to participate in the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC, in English). During his trip, he visited the magnate Elon Musk and presented him with an object that became a cult in his 2023 presidential campaign: a silver leaf chainsaw and red body with the inscription “Long live the freedom, damn.”
Musk has cited the strategy of the Argentine president as an inspiration for his own work related to what has characterized as the “federal bureaucracy.”
The Argentine president said on Saturday that Argentina would leave the Mercosur block of South American nations if necessary to close a free trade agreement with the United States.
(With information from VOA journalist Ken Bredemeier and Reuters)