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Trump Is Said to Push for Early Reopening of North American Trade Deal

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The president wants to begin renegotiating a U.S. trade deal with Canada and Mexico earlier than a scheduled 2026 review, people familiar with his thinking said.The Trump administration intends to push to renegotiate the U.S. trade deal with Canada and Mexico ahead of a required 2026 review of it, seeking to shore up U.S. auto jobs and counter Chinese firms that are making inroads into the Mexican auto sector, people familiar with the deliberations said.The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which Mr. Trump signed in 2020, required the three countries to hold a “joint review” of the deal after six years, on July 1, 2026. But Mr. Trump intends to begin those negotiations sooner, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not been made public.Trump officials particularly want to tighten the pact’s rules governing the auto sector, to try to discourage auto factories from leaving the United States, they said. They are also seeking to block Chinese companies making cars and auto parts from being able to export to the United States through factories in Mexico.Mr. Trump has also threatened to impose a 25 percent tariff on products from Canada and Mexico, saying those countries are allowing drugs and migrants to flow across American borders. Speaking from the Oval Office on Monday night after his inauguration, he said he planned to move forward with the tariffs on Feb. 1.Members of the Trump team believe that Mexico has been violating the terms of a separate agreement to limit metal exports to the United States, and they are eager to show the Mexican government that they mean to take action against such trade violations, one person familiar with the conversations said.The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that Mr. Trump was pushing for an early renegotiation of his North American trade deal. The three countries are required to meet to discuss the terms of the trade deal six years after the agreement went into force, but trade experts have expected the Trump team to speed up work on the issue.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Pitches External Revenue Service to Collect Tariffs: What to Know

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    President Trump has promised to generate a “massive” amount of revenue with tariffs on foreign products, an amount so big that the president said he would create a new agency — the External Revenue Service — to handle collecting the money.“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens,” Mr. Trump said on Monday in his inaugural address, where he reiterated a promise to create the agency. “It will be massive amounts of money pouring into our Treasury coming from foreign sources.”Much about the new agency remains unclear, including how it would differ from the government’s current operations. Trade experts said that, despite the name “external,” the bulk of tariff revenue would continue to be collected from U.S. businesses that import products.Here’s what you need to know about what Mr. Trump has proposed.The U.S. has an established system for collecting tariffs.Tariff revenue is currently collected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which monitors the goods and the people that come into the United States through hundreds of airports and land crossings.This has been the case nearly since the country’s inception. Congress established the Customs Service in 1789 as part of the Treasury Department, and for roughly a century tariffs were the primary source of government revenue, counted in stately customs houses that still stand in most major cities throughout the United States, said John Foote, a customs lawyer at Kelley, Drye and Warren.With the creation of the income tax in 1913, tariffs became a minor source of government revenue, and after the Sept. 11 attacks, the customs bureau was moved from the Treasury Department to the Department of Homeland Security.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 163 Shares36 Views

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    Trump Holds Off on Tariffs, but Paves the Way for Future Trade Action

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    President Trump will stop short of immediately imposing tariffs on imported products on Monday, but will issue an executive order directing federal agencies to begin studying a broad list of trade issues that could ultimately result in taxes on goods from China, Canada, Mexico and other countries in the coming months.The decision suggests that Mr. Trump is taking a more measured approach to fulfilling a key campaign promise of using tariffs to reorder America’s trading relationships. It will also delay — at least for now — fights that have been brewing with foreign governments, which have promised to answer Mr. Trump’s levies with tariffs of their own.The topics Mr. Trump will direct his officials to investigate in an executive order Monday will be extensive, including trade deficits and trade deals signed with China, Canada and Mexico. That could tee up the ability of the president to deploy tariffs on numerous targets for many different reasons, potentially scrambling international supply chains and spawning global trade wars in the weeks and months to come.The executive order will direct federal agencies to examine unfair trade and currency practices and to assess whether foreign governments have complied with terms of the two trade deals Mr. Trump signed in his first presidency. It will also require the government to assess the feasibility of creating an “External Revenue Service” to collect tariffs and dutiesMr. Trump is also ordering a study of tariffs that the United States has imposed for national security reasons, as well as the use of a special trade exemption, called de minimis, that allows low-value goods to come into the United States tariff free. That loophole has allowed large volumes of Chinese goods to escape the tariffs Mr. Trump slapped on China during his first term. The details of the executive order were earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal.While Mr. Trump has decided to hold off on tariffs for now, his advisers say he remains more convinced than ever that they can be used to great advantage.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Defending Michigan’s Auto Industry, Whitmer Warns of Tariff Risks

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    Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addressed the Detroit Auto Show, saying that tariffs should not be used “to punish our closest trading partners,” like Canada.Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a leading Democrat from a critical battleground state, on Wednesday subtly warned against President-elect Donald J. Trump’s tariff threats targeting Canada, even as she stressed her broader willingness to work with him on the cusp of his second inauguration.Her speech, at the Detroit Auto Show, offered among the clearest examples yet of how Democrats from states that Mr. Trump carried are seeking to balance fresh overtures to the incoming president with their staunch opposition to some of his policy proposals.Speaking at a convention center just across the Detroit River from Windsor, Ont., Ms. Whitmer described strong cultural and industrial ties between the two cities.Using tariffs as punishment, she said, risks “damaging supply chains, slowing production lines and cutting jobs on both sides of the border.”Ms. Whitmer did not mention Mr. Trump by name as she broached the subject, but he has threatened to impose tariffs on imports from Canada if the country does not reduce the flow of migrants and fentanyl to the United States. The Ontario Premier Doug Ford has discussed retaliation, including threatening to disrupt the electricity supply from the province to the United States.“I am not opposed to tariffs outright, but we cannot treat them like a one-size-fits-all solution, and we certainly shouldn’t use them to punish our closest trading partners,” Ms. Whitmer said, arguing that such an approach could embolden China.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 138 Shares156 Views

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    Chinese Companies Have Sidestepped Trump’s Tariffs. They Could Do It Again.

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    The companies have found plenty of new channels to the U.S. market — demonstrating the potential limits of the tariffs Donald Trump has promised to impose.After President Donald J. Trump slapped tariffs on Chinese bicycles in 2018, Arnold Kamler, then the chief executive of the bike maker Kent International, saw a curious trend play out in the bicycle industry.Chinese bicycle factories moved their final manufacturing and assembly operations out of China, setting up new facilities in Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia and India. Using parts mostly from China, those companies made bicycles that they could export directly to the United States — without paying the 25 percent tariff had the bike been shipped straight from China.“The net effect of what’s going on with these tariffs is that Chinese factories in China are setting up Chinese factories in other countries,” said Mr. Kamler, whose company imports some bicycles from China and makes others at a South Carolina factory.Pushing those factories into other countries resulted in additional costs for companies and consumers, without increasing the amount of manufacturing in the United States, Mr. Kamler said. He said he had been forced to raise his prices several times as a result of the tariffs.“There’s no real gain here,” said Mr. Kamler, whose bikes are sold at Walmart and other retailers. “It’s very inflationary.”Arnold Kamler said he had to raise prices at Kent International several times as a result of President Donald J. Trump’s 2018 tariffs.Kate Thornton for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 150 Shares156 Views

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    Canadian Ministers Meet Trump Aides at Mar-a-Lago to Discuss Border, and Tariffs

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    President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on Canadian exports unless the country stops the flow of migrants and fentanyl to the U.S.Two top Canadian ministers met on Friday with members of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s circle in Florida about a border security plan that Canada hopes will ward off Mr. Trump’s threats to impose economically damaging tariffs on imports from the country. But the ministers returned home without any assurances.The meeting was characterized in advance as an attempt to build on a dinner Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago over the Thanksgiving weekend as well as on a recent telephone conversation between members of Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet and Thomas D. Homan, Mr. Trump’s designated border czar.Mélanie Joly, Canada’s foreign minister, and Dominic LeBlanc, its finance minister, arrived in Florida on Thursday evening for the session with Howard Lutnick, Mr. Trump’s choice for commerce secretary, and former Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, the president-elect’s pick to run the Interior Department who would also coordinate energy policy.Mr. Trump has said he will impose 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada when he takes office in January if the country does not reduce the flow of migrants and fentanyl into the United States. Such a move could be devastating for Canada, whose economy depends heavily on exports to the United States. But on at least one occasion, Mr. Trump has suggested that his tariff plan may have less to do with border security than with his desire to eliminate the $50 billion trade deficit with Canada. Oil and gas exports from Canada account for most of that trade imbalance. Without them, the U.S. generally has a trade surplus with Canada.Jean-Sébastien Comeau, a spokesman for Mr. LeBlanc, described the Mar-a-Lago session as a “positive, productive meeting” and said that the two nominees “agreed to relay information to President Trump.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 88 Shares129 Views

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    Trump’s Tariff Threat Pits Canada Against Mexico

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    If President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threat of hefty tariffs on Canada and Mexico was intended as a divide-and-conquer strategy, early signs show that it might be working.After his missive on Monday, in which he said he planned to impose a 25 percent tariff on all imports from both of the United States’ neighbors, Ottawa and Mexico City followed starkly different approaches.Mexico took a tough stance, threatening to retaliate with its own tariffs on U.S. goods. Canada, instead, emphasized that it was much closer aligned to the United States than Mexico.The trade agreement between the three North American nations has been carefully maintained over the past three decades through a delicate balance between the United States and its two key allies.As Mr. Trump prepares to take office, his willingness to tear that up to pressure the two countries on migration could open the door to the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement being replaced by separate bilateral deals with the United States.Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s finance minister, has tried to show that Canada is aligned with Mr. Trump’s hawkish attitude toward China.Blair Gable/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 113 Shares139 Views

    in Economy

    Tariff Threats Show Trump’s Commitment to Upending Global Trade

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    The president-elect’s threat to hit Canada, Mexico and China with new tariffs is already rocking business and diplomatic relationships and could topple the trade pacts he signed in his first term.President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threats to impose damaging tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China may ultimately be an opening wager to try to use the power of the American market to persuade other countries to stem a flow of drugs and migrants across U.S. borders.But even if the threat to impose vast tariffs on some of the world’s largest economies is a negotiating tactic, it is also a gambit that has immediate real-world consequences.Before Mr. Trump even sets foot in the Oval Office, his threat to put tariffs on America’s three largest trading partners on his first day in office was reverberating around the world, shocking international businesses, rocking diplomatic relationships and calling into question two big trade deals that Mr. Trump negotiated during his first term.Mr. Trump’s pronouncement late Monday that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on all goods from Canada and Mexico and a 10 percent tariff on products from China was immediately denounced by business groups, who said such a move would cause economic harm. Foreign officials rushed to reassure the incoming Trump administration that they had been working to stop drugs and migrants from coming into the United States — while warning that they were also ready to turn around and impose their own tariffs on American exports.Mr. Trump’s threats may have been intended to silence investors and economists who have recently questioned whether the president-elect would go through with imposing the big levies he promised while campaigning. In the run-up to the election, Mr. Trump pledged to put a 60 percent tariff on goods from China and a tax of at least 10 percent on all other imports. Such a move could ignite a global trade war, slowing economies around the world.Whether Mr. Trump’s threats ultimately show his prowess as a deal-maker or simply sow chaos, they are a reminder that the president-elect is eager to upend global relationships to try to secure points for the United States. That includes a willingness to potentially topple the trade pacts that he himself worked to put in place with Mexico, Canada and China during his first term after he used bruising tariffs to force them into making concessions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 150 Shares119 Views

    in Economy

    Trump Plans Tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico That Could Cripple Trade

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    President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Monday that he would impose tariffs on all products coming into the United States from Canada, Mexico and China on his first day in office, a move that would scramble global supply chains and impose heavy costs on companies that rely on doing business with some of the world’s largest economies.In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump mentioned a caravan of migrants making its way to the United States from Mexico, and said he would use an executive order to levy a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico until drugs and migrants stopped coming over the border.“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” the president-elect wrote.“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” he added. “We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”In a separate post, Mr. Trump also threatened an additional 10 percent tariff on all products from China, saying that the country was shipping illegal drugs to the United States.“Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this but, unfortunately, they never followed through,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More