President Trump has said that the US will impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Tuesday, saying there’s “no room left” for the two countries to avoid the measures.
Trump signed an executive order on February 1 to impose the 25% tariffs on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada with a carve-out for Canadian oil, which will be hit with a 10% tariff.
Trump paused the tariffs for 30 days after speaking with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, who both pledged to work to stem the flow of fentanyl and migrants entering the US. But Trump said on Monday that drugs were still “pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels.”
Reducing the flow of fentanyl into the US is extremely difficult since its high potency means traffickers can smuggle massive numbers of doses in small, hard-to-detect packages.
Trump also wants to use the tariffs to pressure companies to manufacture in the US and to reduce the trade deficits between the US and its trading partners. He has previously acknowledged the tariffs will cause “pain” for Americans since they will increase domestic prices.
Canada has said it’s ready to hit the US with retaliatory tariffs right away, and Mexico is vowing it will respond as well. Last month, Trump also imposed a 10% tariff on China and said that it would increase by another 10% on Tuesday.
This is great news. It is fair.
Wow this nutcase Freeland of Canada today said Canada needs nuclear weapons to protect it from the USA.
Well, it is understandable, the US treats friends like enemies, does not honor agreements, they are back stabbers and can't be trusted. Canada must protect itself against such a neighbor.
The trade war is back on. A month ago you claimed is was all over because Canada and Mexico back down. Did they?
Fentanyl is a problem. It matters, unlike the foreign policy you care about.
Yes, Fentanyl is a problem. But the biggest problem is the users. Dry up fentanyl they will switched to something else. In any case, very little fentanyl comes from Canada. So what is the point of starting a trade war with Canada? Just a dumb idea that is going to hurt more people.
Nutcase? Lol! The biggest nutcase on this planet is trump, nobody, not even unlikeable Freeland, even comes close to his level of crazy.
Markets sink as Trump confirms tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn48q3150dxo
US stock markets sank in response to the measures, which have been threatened since earlier this year and are due to go into effect on Tuesday.
All three countries have said they will retaliate against the US in response to the tariffs, raising the prospect of a widening trade war.
Canada's Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said the tariffs are "an existential threat to us" with "thousands of jobs in Canada at stake".
Less than two months in office and what a mess, Mafia gangs are more organized and trustworthy than the Trump gang. They can't trust each other, a bad place to work.
Trade wars like all wars are easy to start. The person starting a war always thinks that they will get an outcome they expect. And sometimes they do. More often it takes on a life of its own and the results are unpredictable. Also unpredictable is who gets hurt.
This is more a drug war. You care about US power and crushing those who resist. Trump is acting on fentanyl, which impacts weak Americans.
No it is a trade war.
Canada is not responsible for this. Trump is pulling this out of his ass
Trump is acting on fentanyl
Horsepuckey, Rump is "acting on" the foreign policy comprehension of a two year-old, punishing those who he feels aren't sufficiently deferential to his position as King Of The World. If he didn't have fentanyl to point at as a reason it would be bad avocados or mining too much gold.
Trump is "acting on fentanyl" in the same way as the drunk looks for his keys under the streetlight instead of where he dropped them because "the light is better there."
There's one, and only one, way to act effectively on fentanyl, and that is to end the war on drugs.
American presidents are bullies and extortionists, that is how they handle foreign policies, but Trump is even doing at home dealing with individual states.
When Trump starts crying how other nations take advantage of the poor USA, it is enough to scream; it is so annoying to hear this whining BS.
But he’s correct. Others protect, and US industry flows overseas as a result.
Germany uses a WTO legal VAT as essentially a tariff.
This matter, however, is directed at the fentanyl epidemic in the US. Many Americans want it acted upon, and this is an action.
I can remember when we, tourists, had to pay customs when we returned with a new camera from Germany, the costumes people scratched the company logo off the item. Tourists are exempt from VAT, they get their money back before they leave the country. But maybe things have changed.
They have not.
No. It's not. A value-added tax or a goods and services tax is applied to ALL items regardless of where they come from. Calling it a tariff is the same as calling a trade deficit a subsidy. A LIE, but you'll just tell me I'm "angry" because I don't "understand" and this is how you '"negotiate". Except that negotiation requires you SAY WHAT YOU WANT, and in this case, what he wanted is what he got THE LAST TIME, it's called a trade agreement. When you do what he's doing, he's illegally reneging on his last agreement, only on such a ridiculously large scale you have to go back to McKinley's tariffs, which started the Great Depression, and it's being applied to things you don't even produce yourselves! What does it take to get through to you? You are so blind. And there's basically NO fentanyl coming in from Canada! So little it barely even registers.
I dislike trade agreements, myself. However, these tariffs seem targeted at behaviour, akin to trade sanctions on Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Syria, North Korea, etc.
The Great Depression started three decades after McKinley’s death. You may be thinking of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which contributed to lengthening and deepening the Great Depression.
Yes. Easier name to remember. 🙂
The autocratic, neo-fascist President Trump creates government revenue with tariffs at the expense of inflation for US citizens. Why doesn't he introduce a comprehensive VAT that also applies to imports, as the example of the EU shows? Is he discriminating against countries? He intends to create investment competition so that internationally oriented corporations and export companies invest in the USA.
https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/current-policy-perspectives/2025/the-impact-of-tariffs-on-inflation
https://uscib.org/value-added-tax-rates-vat-by-country/
https://www.fonoa.com/blog/the-american-exception-why-the-us-has-no-vat-system
https://www.globalvatcompliance.com/globalvatnews/world-countries-vat-rates-2020/
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/quick-charts/value-added-tax-vat-rates
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/united-states/corporate/other-taxes
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/sales-tax-rates/
https://www.salestaxinstitute.com/resources/rates
https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates.html
What about a tax on luxury goods like expensive cars, yachts and mansions, and luxury goods of any kind including Champaign and caviar? Vat is a regressive sales tax.
This makes the tax system more intransparent and bureaucratic. It is easier for a country to tax luxury goods with a higher VAT rate.
Agreed, call it a luxury VAT, what about 100% Vat on luxury cars and Yachts? No VAT on basic necessities, like basic shelter?
Not having to pay VAT on basic necessities will be much appreciated by the working people who used to build luxury cars and yachts but no longer have jobs.
Workers need wages to buy the products they produce, wages have been stagnating for decades. CC help to keep the standard of living up, at least for a while. The oligarchs provide a small market, that does not change with some inflation, masses of workers produce for mass consumption. They need to earn enough to buy what they produce.
Real wages have been rising for decades. While they’ve risen FASTER for the top 10%, they’ve risen for all demographics.
The wages were stagnating 4 decades, most of increased production went to the upper class, all economists have reported that fact. My SS was not increased for a time and when it was increased it was barely enough to pay the increased SS part B Medicare, it does not cover the increase of prescriptions. Interests on savings accounts was not enough to cover the inflation losses and even that little is taxed as income.
Before Reagan there was a small sum of interest earned which was tax exempt, if I am not mistaken it was $400 or less, after Reagans tax cuts every $$ interest on savings is taxable income.
The salami method to impoverish wage/salary earners living standards, you know like the frog in boiling water.
What I posted is debatable, I know.
I would have thought SS would have been indexed for inflation.
Social Security's increases are tied to inflation, but lag it.
The Cost of Living Allowance is calculated the year before it takes effect, so if inflation rises between calculation and implementation, the COLA will be lower than inflation, while if it falls the COLA will be higher than inflation.
Another problem is that it's tagged to general/overall inflation, when recipients tend to have different spending patterns than the overall population — more on medical stuff, less on gasoline, for example.
Thanks for clarifying.
Since 2009 the fed, minimum wage is frozen at $7.25. Each election they promised an increase, what ever happened to that? Not one penny increase and that by a nation bragging about having the richest men in the world, too stingy and narrowminded to pay a quarter more an hour. Sickening, such small mindedness of oligarchs. They choke on the $$$ bills and still don't have enough. Despicable people, that includes Trump.
“Since 2009 the fed, minimum wage is frozen at $7.25.”
And a whopping 1.3% of US workers earn that minimum wage, which is about six times the median income worldwide — almost entirely people who are just entering the work force and nearly instantly move up, and retirees who decide to take part-time jobs for a little extra money.
People would then buy them in Canada or Mexico if possible.
But the tariffs would become due when they cross the border with the product they purchased in Canada or Mexico, or not?
VAT + UBI
VAT is a regressive tax, I am a believer in progressive taxation including property taxes. I also believe that education should not be funded with regressive property taxes.
Off topic, but I must say it,
good government would expand and offer lower income people affordable Medicaid insurance at a low rate, maybe one 1-2 % for even minimum wage earners including dental care.
I just needed to say it.
Property taxes can cause struggling people to sell their homes when inflation drives up their value. Then, the rich move in to the best areas.
Don't forget, renters pay the property tax on rental property.
The taxes can make people homeless, it is like a second mortgage or rent.
We have a housing problem, widowed old people living alone in two story four bedroom buildings they can barely afford to maintain while young families with children are homeless. A big social problem, but a profitable. We don't talk about it, gender, a medical issue effecting relative few people is more urgent and important.
What ever happened to simple COMMON SENSE?
You focus on improving quality of life. You should look at Trump’s Doge: The idea is there is a great deal of waste. This applies outside the public sector too.
For Pennies on the $$$.
The fentanyl claim is completely bogus. In 2024, 43 pounds of fentanyl was seized at the Canadian border and almost 22,000 pounds at the Mexican border.
The number of illegal migrants moving north from the US to Canada exceeds the number that cross in the other direction. In any case, it is dwarfed by illegal crossings from Mexico to US. The real problem that needs to be addressed is the illegal guns being transported from the US to Canada. Perhaps Canada should impose tariffs for that. If Trump wants to impose tariffs let him do so. But don’t make phony claims that don’t hold any water. It was after all he who negotiated and signed the USMCA trade agreement.
The trade agreement was an attempt at improvement not an attempt at perfection.
That’s crazy. It’s up for review in 2026. When you sign an agreement with a close ally, you live with it until it’s up for renegotiation.
Reducing the flow of fentanyl into the US is extremely difficult since its high potency means traffickers can smuggle massive numbers of doses in small, hard-to-detect packages.
Plus, there is that little thing called DEMAND that just never seems to be addressed.
If it was perfectly legal to import, sell, buy, and possess real heroin in the United States, there probably wouldn’t be much demand for fentanyl outside some specialized medical uses. The entire reason for fentanyl on the street is that it’s easier to smuggle.
I don't know. I've heard there is no turning back. Junkies want the more potent shit and that means heroin cut with Fentanyl. So, unless the legal stuff was cut with Fentanyl, there would probably still be a black market for it. Of course, I could be completely wrong since I haven't been around the drug scene for decades.
I’d heard they prefer heroin but it’s too expensive. But I don’t know any junkies.
Heroin is no longer available for the most part. It’s less potent and more expensive.
Plus the Taliban stamped out opium production in Afghanistan, until growing ramps back up in Colombia and Southeast Asia all heroin comes from stored reserves. This is the exact same scenario which played out the last time the Taliban was in power.
It's telling that the US didn't pull out of Afghanistan until fentanyl production was high enough to almost completely replace heroin, Every year that the US was in Afghanistan set a new record for opium production, except one when there was a partial crop failure.
It’s more expensive because it’s more difficult to smuggle. 20 grams of fentanyl is as powerful as a full kilo of heroin. The former can be sewn into the lining of a wallet. The latter is difficult to hide.
I live in Baltimore and I see 'junkies' everyday. If there wasn't such a demand for drugs here in the U.S., there wouldn't be such a huge and ever growing market for all sorts of drugs. Legalizing most drugs would take a large part of the profit out of it, but then again, the drug pushers would create other drugs to push upon the willing.
Any changes will bring good and bad, generally.
Maybe Canada should keep tariffs on US goods until the US gets its people to stop using Fentanyl.
Trade wars are just another arena of war, which oftentimes is the precursor to 'shooting wars'. The U.S. is in a very difficult situation economically and Trump is doing what he thinks will make the U.S. an industrial power again by forcing companies back to the U.S. with his tariff wars. These things don't often work out as planned, and fixing the U.S. industrial base won't happen quickly, if at all as we now exist in a globalized world economy and much of the economic clout is shifting to the east.
Tariffs are better than blanket taxation. You only pay the tariff increase if you buy the product that has tariffs on it. At which point oneself is who choses to pay for it or not.
Way better than Everyone Pays the now known to be unaccountable fed gov and the fed gov does whatever it wants with those funds.
This restores the boycott to a better level of function.
And you only pay income tax if you work. And you only pay property tax if you own property. And you only pay sales tax if you buy things.
D. Trump is like a bull in a China shop. Any time he moves, he destroys something. He is lost in his own make-believe autocratic world.
With his illusion of tariffs, which are regressive taxes, he will create a massive man-made economic disaster in the United States and around the world.
It seems that every 100 years then comes somebody who thinks that he has discovered the wheel.
All economists are telling him that he should stop believing his wild dreams and face reality. As the Wall Street Journal editorial has emphasized, Trump is taking the dumbest tariff plunge.
And he claims it's because of "very high and unacceptable levels" of fentanyl importation. So what is an "acceptable" level of fentanyl imports?
In the case of Canada, apparently it's less than .5 percent.
Maybe we’re only supposed to consume domestically produced fentanyl?