(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The wait for President Donald Trump’s tariffs is over.
Trump announced he will impose tariffs on imported goods from Mexico and Canada starting Saturday, fulfilling one of his key campaign promises.
“We’ll be announcing the tariffs on Canada and Mexico for a number of reasons,” Trump said while addressing reporters from the Oval Office on Thursday.
He pointed to the unprecedented number of illegal aliens and fentanyl flooding into the country, along with the massive trade deficits with both Canada and Mexico, as reasons for the tariffs.
“I’ll be putting the tariff of 25% on Canada and separately 25% on Mexico, and we will really have to do that because we have very big deficits with those countries,” Trump declared. “Those tariffs may or may not rise with time.”
Asked whether oil would be included in the tariffs, Trump replied, “Oil is going to have nothing to do with it as far as I’m concerned.”
Later, Trump pushed back on a reporter’s claim that oil would be excluded from the tariffs.
“I didn’t say that. You said that,” Trump said. “We may or may not. We’re going to make that determination, probably tonight, on oil. Because they send us oil, we’ll see. It depends on what the price is. If the oil is properly priced, if they treat us properly—which they don’t.”
The newly sworn-in president called out the nation’s neighboring countries: “Look, Mexico and Canada have never been good to us on trade. They’ve treated us very unfairly on trade, and we will be able to make that up very quickly because we don’t need the products that they have.”
Oil and lumber are among the goods imported from Canada and Mexico that Trump said the U.S. does not need.
“We have more than almost anybody in those two categories,” he said, slamming the U.S. subsidies to Canada—$175 billion a year—and Mexico—$250-300 billion annually.
