While much about the threatened tariffs is still unclear, experts predict they would be bad news for all three economies, with few winners.
Decades of trade integration across North America are on the precipice of major disruption by tariffs that President Trump says he wants to impose on Canada and Mexico, the United States’ top trading partners.
And while tariffs are predicted to inflict pain on all three nations, they would cause more damage to Canada and Mexico, smaller economies that are deeply dependent on the United States.
Officials in both countries breathed a brief sigh of relief on Monday, when Mr. Trump stopped short of making tariffs part of his blizzard of executive orders on his first day in office. But the relief was short-lived: later in the evening, Mr. Trump told reporters he was still planning to pursue tariffs.
“We’re thinking in terms of 25 percent on Mexico and Canada,” Mr. Trump said in the Oval Office. “I think we’ll do it February 1.”
Trade experts are gauging whether tariffs will materialize or whether the threat alone is a negotiating tactic aimed at winning concessions from Mexico and Canada. Both countries avoided steep tariffs during the first Trump administration, and both are wagering that the United States needs Mexico and Canada to take on China, a much larger rival.
Economists and policymakers say tariffs would cause a loss of income and jobs and force consumers to pay more for many products.