U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said his proposed 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods will take effect on 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, opens new tab 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 and interdict fentanyl ingredients and other contraband, and other activities.
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 Canada, China and Mexico until better screening can be implemented.
TARIFF TACTICS
Trump’s decision to ratchet up tariffs on Chinese goods mirrors his moves to escalate tariffs during his first-term trade wars with Beijing until serious trade negotiations took place between the world’s two largest economies.
Dean Cheng, senior adviser at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said the rising tariffs were part of a broad push by Trump to respond to Chinese challenges that also included the State Department’s removal of wording about not supporting Taiwan independence to tougher scrutiny of U.S.-listed Chinese companies.
“It’s all the pieces on the chessboard,” he said.
The Chinese embassy had no immediate comment.
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 as Trump’s new tariffs reach 20% on U.S. imports from China, on top of existing duties of up to 25% imposed during Trump’s first term. U.S. imports from China totaled $439 billion last year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
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, called for equal dialogue and consultation.
Trump has targeted early April for implementing broader “reciprocal tariffs” to match the import duty rates of other countries and offset their other restrictions.
During a news conference on Thursday, Trump downplayed the potential inflationary impact of tariffs for Americans, arguing that his first-term tariffs on China raised hundreds of billions of dollars without negatively affecting the U.S. economy.
“I find that it’s not about inflation. It’s about fairness. And the inflation for us has not existed, and I don’t think it’s going to exist,” he said.
