On Feb. 1, 2025, President Trump introduced a tariff plan for Canadian, Mexican, and Chinese imports into the US, sparking controversy among various political factions.

Imports from Canada and Mexico will suffer a 25% tariff on all imports, except incoming energy resources from Canada (Petroleum, Natural Gas, etc), which were placed at 10%.

President Trump’s reason for imposing these higher tariffs, according to a fact sheet via The White House, was to deter “The extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs…” which “…constitutes a national emergency…” 

The fact sheet further clarifies that despite trade accounting for 67% of Canada’s GDP, 73% of Mexico’s, and 37% of China’s, trade only accounts for 24% of the United States’ GDP. Yet our trade deficit was the highest in the world, at $1 trillion.

President Trump later said that he intends to impose more tariffs across the board, “in the neighborhood of 25%” on all automotive imports, and plans to impose a similar tariff on pharmaceutical and semiconductor imports.

Tariffs, taxes on imported goods, can offer governments revenue and protect domestic industries, but they can also lead to higher consumer prices and potential trade wars. 

Some have also criticized the White House’s claim that illegal aliens and drugs pose an extraordinary threat and constitute a national emergency, with one piece by Leon Krauze from The Washington Post going so far as to say that President Trump “[casts] doubt on the future of free trade in North America by threatening 25% tariffs,” among other things.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has vowed to retaliate against these tariffs by implementing her own. These Mexican tariffs on US goods could range from 5% to 20%, and all the way up to 25% on equivalent US imports.

“We don’t want to enter a trade war,” President Sheinbaum said, according to one article by The New York Times. She would go on to further justify her retaliatory tariffs: “For humanitarian reasons, we cooperate to prevent the illegal trafficking of drugs into the United States. However, as we have stated on many occasions, the government of [the United States] must also take responsibility for the opioid crisis that has caused so many deaths in the United States.”

Some Canadians have rallied against these tariffs, using the slogan “Buy Canadian” on social media to promote purchasing domestically made products over their US counterparts.

The Canadian government has responded by employing its own tariffs, which include but are not limited to “orange juice, peanut butter, wine, spirits, beer, coffee, appliances, apparel, footwear, motorcycles, cosmetics, and certain paper products,” according to the Government of Canada’s website, and more recently a 25% tariff on nearly $16 Billion worth of steel and aluminum.

Both the US and Canadian tariffs went into effect on March 4, 2025. The Canadian tariffs on steel and aluminum went into effect on March 13, 2025.

It’s clear that feelings are very strong regarding these tariffs. But it is up to the Trump administration to manage and adjust these tariffs accordingly and to consider the American public’s already arduous experience with inflation since the COVID-19 pandemic years prior.