By Jeff Mason, Doina Chiacu and Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said his proposed 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods will take effect March 4 along with an extra 10% duty on Chinese imports because deadly drugs are still pouring into the U.S. from those countries.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the fresh tariffs on Chinese imports would stack on top of the 10% tariff that he levied on Feb. 4 over the fentanyl opioid crisis, resulting in a cumulative 20% tariff.
Trump first announced the new duties on Chinese imports in a post on his Truth Social site that he would impose the additional 10% tariff, effective March 4.
In the post, Trump said drugs, namely fentanyl, were still coming into the U.S. at “very high and unacceptable levels,” with a large percentage of them the deadly opioid fentanyl.
Trump told reporters he decided to add the extra tariffs on China and stick to the Tuesday deadline for Canada and Mexico given what his administration sees as insufficient progress on curbing fentanyl flows into the country.
Asked if Mexico and Canada had made enough progress on curbing fentanyl shipments into the U.S., Trump said: “I don’t see that at all. No, not on drugs.”
“There are ongoing discussions with the Chinese, Mexico and Canada,” a White House official told Reuters. “We’ve gotten a good handle on the migration issue, but there are still concerns on the other issue of fentanyl deaths.
Sources told Reuters that Mexico will extradite to the United States drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was convicted in 1985 of murdering a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent but released in 2013 and returned to trafficking.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 72,776 people died from synthetic opioids in 2023 in the U.S., chiefly from fentanyl.
FOREIGN AID FREEZE
Customs and Border Patrol agents seized 991 pounds of fentanyl at the southwest border in January 2025, down 50.5% from a year earlier, but still enough to kill many millions of Americans, the White House official said.
Trump’s move to blame Mexico and Canada for the continuing flow of fentanyl into the U.S. comes as his freeze on American foreign aid is disrupting efforts to fight the illicit trade.
Reuters reported on Monday that his aid freeze has stalled the planned expansion of a United Nations program to help the Mexican Navy better screen cargo entering Mexican ports to interdict fentanyl ingredients and other contraband.
Other activities halted by the freeze include U.S. training of Mexican authorities to find and dismantle clandestine fentanyl labs and U.S. donations of drug-sniffing dogs to Mexico. But a State Department official last week told Reuters that nearly $8 million in frozen funds has since been released for anti-narcotics programs in Mexico.
Also hampering U.S. drug interdiction efforts is a decision by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to delay implementation of a ban on duty-free low-value package shipments from China, Canada and Mexico until adequate screening procedures can be put in place.
TARIFF TACTICS
Trump’s decision to ratchet up tariffs on Chinese goods mirrors his actions to systematically escalate tariffs during his first-term trade wars with Beijing until serious trade negotiations took place between the world’s two largest economies.
Thus far, Chinese President Xi Jinping has not engaged in negotiations over fentanyl, instead applying limited 10% retaliatory duties on U.S. energy and farm equipment.
But Beijing could push back harder if Trump’s new tariffs reach 20% on all U.S. imports from China, which totaled $439 billion last year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Many of those imports already faced duties of up to 25% from Trump’s first-term trade actions.
Piling on more tariffs could pose risks to both the Chinese and U.S. economies. China has been struggling with a property crisis and weak domestic demand, while U.S. inflation remains sticky and interest rates are elevated.
China, in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, said China and the United States should address concerns in economic and trade fields through equal dialogue and consultation.
Trump’s statements cleared up some confusion that he sowed on Wednesday over tariff deadlines, with comments suggesting that he could push the deadline back for a month until April 4.
Trump has targeted early April for implementing “reciprocal tariffs” to match the import duty rates of other countries and offset their other restrictions.
TARIFF, BORDER TALKS
Meanwhile, Canadian and Mexican officials were due to meet with Trump administration counterparts in Washington on Thursday and Friday to try to forestall the tariffs, which could deal a serious blow to a highly integrated North American economy.
Mexican Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard will meet with Greer on Thursday and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Friday.
Ebrard’s deputy, Vidal Llerenas, on Thursday said Mexico could roll out other trade measures beyond its recent imposition of tariffs on low-cost imports aimed at reducing cheap shipments from China.
In Canada, Public Safety Minister David McGuinty said on Thursday that the progress Canada has made on tightening security along the border with the United States and combating drug smuggling should satisfy the Trump administration.
“The evidence is irrefutable – progress is being made,” McGuinty said in televised remarks to reporters in Washington ahead of two days of talks with U.S. officials.
“In my view, any test that was put on Canada in terms of showing progress and meeting standards for the border – I believe those have been met,” he said.
The Canada Border Services Agency said in a statement that it was launching a targeted, cross-country initiative to intercept illegal contraband arriving and leaving the country, with a focus on fentanyl and other synthetic narcotics.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Andrea Shalal; additional reporting by David Lawder in Washington, Disha Mishra in Bengaluru and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Writing by David Lawder and Joseph Ax; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Alistair Bell and Deepa Babignton)
