EBN- US President-elect Donald Trump has brandished the tariff weapon early on against America’s adversaries and partners alike, threatening to impose tariffs on all products coming to the United States from China, Canada and Mexico on his first day in the White House.
Trump wrote on Truth Social, talking about the migrant caravan heading to the United States from Mexico, and said he would use an executive order to impose a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico until migrants and drugs stop coming into the United States. He added that the tariffs will remain in place until drugs, especially fentanyl, and illegal aliens stop invading our country.
In another post, Trump threatened to impose an additional 10% tariff on all products coming from China, saying the country was transporting illegal drugs to the United States. Trump said that Chinese representatives told him they would impose the maximum penalty, the death penalty, on any drug traffickers they caught, but unfortunately they never carried out this, he said.
The New York Times warned that Trump’s threat would disrupt global supply chains and impose huge costs on companies that depend on doing business with some of the world’s largest corporations.
Chaos warning
The New York Times said that these tariffs together represent a dramatic warning against the three largest trading partners of the United States, a move that threatens to sow chaos in America’s diplomatic and commercial relations even before Trump sets foot in the White House.
The newspaper pointed out that news of the possibility of imposing a tariff raised concerns in the three countries, as the Canadian and Mexican currencies fell against the dollar, while a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington warned that no one would win if a trade war broke out.
