MEXICO CITY — Mexico and Canada have managed to avoid U.S. tariffs — for now — after their leaders came to last-minute agreements with President Trump. But barring another eleventh-hour deal, tariffs on goods from China were scheduled to go into force Tuesday, raising the specter of a trade war that could rile the global economy and punish American consumers.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Trump said Monday that they had come to an accord that delays for at least a month Trump’s threat of 25% tariffs on all Mexican goods imported to the United States.
Mexico promised to reinforce its northern border with 10,000 members of its national guard in order to combat migration and the trafficking of illegal drugs. The country has long stationed thousands of troops along its northern border. It sent some 15,000 members of the armed forces there in 2019, the last time Trump threatened — but then walked back — tariffs.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said tariffs on goods from his country had also been averted for at least one month. He said on X that Canada would also further militarize its border with the U.S. with “new choppers, technology and personnel,” and would appoint a “Fentanyl Czar.”
On Saturday, Trump signed executive orders placing duties of 25% on imported goods from Mexico and Canada, with a 10% rate on Canadian energy products. Trump also imposed a 10% tax on all imports from China.
Trump said the tariffs were necessary because the three countries haven’t done enough to stop the flow of unauthorized immigrants and drugs into the United States. The White House insisted the measures would remain in place “until the crisis is alleviated,” with Trump saying “nothing” would stop him from imposing the tariffs.
The last-minute deals with Canada and Mexico followed a now-familiar Trump script: Make a radical threat, and then announce a final hour accord, insisting that the targeted government had caved to Trump’s demands.
A similar scenario unfolded last month with Colombia, after it turned back U.S.-bound military flights filled with deportees from the United States, triggering a diplomatic crisis.
Trump imposed tariffs on Colombian imports to the United States, but then pulled back, saying Colombian President Gustavo Petro had agreed to receive military flights with Colombian deportees — something that the Colombian president never publicly confirmed.
In Mexico, experts have questioned whether sending national guard troops to the border will do much to reduce the smuggling of migrants and fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is extremely potent and difficult to detect.
“You don’t stop fentanyl with soldiers,” said Arturo Rocha, who has served as a senior migration official in the Mexican government. He added that even before Trump took office, Border Patrol encounters with migrants had fallen sharply, thanks in part to Mexico’s efforts to keep them from reaching the U.S. border.
“The level of migrants irregularly crossing into the U.S. is remarkably low,” he said.
This month, Border Patrol apprehensions are on track to hit their lowest levels since 2017, according to Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America.
Since Trump took office, Sheinbaum, like other world leaders, has had to navigate a delicate balance between appeasing the U.S. leader and not being seen by her domestic audience as bowing to Washington’s every demand.
“What a circus,” said Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid, an economics professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Because Mexico’s economy is enmeshed with that of the U.S., Sheinbaum, he said, must continue to take Trump’s tariff threats seriously, even if it’s clear that he is using them primarily as a negotiating tactic
