Mexico, China, Canada warn Trump against tariff tit-for-tat

The governments of China and Mexico warned of retaliatory trade actions and Canada urged restraint Tuesday after President-elect Trump on Monday threatened steep tariffs to pressure those countries into cracking down on drug trafficking and illegal immigration.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the U.S., Liu Pengyu, warned that “no one will win a trade war or a tariff war,” while Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum reportedly said she would send a letter to Trump urging dialogue and cooperation. 

“To one tariff will come another and so on, until we put our common businesses at risk,” Sheinbaum said during a regular press conference, Reuters reported. She warned that tariffs would cause inflation and job losses in both countries.

Trump posted on his social media site Monday night, threatening to impose on his first day in office a 25 percent tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico until “Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country.”

For China, he threatened an additional 10 percent on top of any other tariffs unless the Chinese government introduces the death penalty for “any drug dealers” caught shipping fentanyl into the United States. 

In a joint statement, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc laid out the stakes of U.S. reliance on Canada for crude oil, and its importance as an export market, noting Canada imports “more goods from the U.S. than China, Japan, France and the U.K. combined.”

“Our relationship today is balanced and mutual beneficial, particularly for American workers,” Freeland and LeBlanc said in the statement. 

“Canada places the highest priority on border security and the integrity of our shared border.”