Donald Trump, the president of the United States, stated Thursday that he would make a decision shortly regarding whether to exempt oil imports from Canada and Mexico from the 25 percent tariffs he has promised to apply to their goods beginning on Saturday.
Trump said he would impose tariffs on Canadian and Mexican oil, adding that it would partly depend on prices and on whether the two countries treat them properly.
“We may or may not. We’re going to make that determination probably tonight,” he said.
DAILY POST recalls that Trump has set a Saturday deadline to impose 25 per cent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada to push the two largest U.S. trading partners to take action to halt illegal migrants and shipments of fentanyl from crossing their borders into the U.S.
The U.S. president, however, said on Thursday that the North American duties would be imposed for a number of reasons, stressing that the tariff level may or may not rise with time.
Trump also said he was still considering new tariffs on Chinese goods, citing its part in the fentanyl trade.
He has threatened a 10 percent duty on all Chinese goods after imposing punitive tariffs on some $370 billion worth of Chinese imports during his first term in office.
“With China, I’m also thinking about something because they’re sending fentanyl into our country, and because of that, they’re causing us hundreds of thousands of deaths, so China is going to end up paying a tariff also for that, and we’re in the process of doing that.
“We’ll make a determination on what it’s going to be, but China has to stop sending fentanyl into our country and killing our people,” Trump said.
