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U.S. President Donald Trump attends a press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 27, 2025.
Trump’s tariffs back on, until they’re not
US President Donald Trump announced Thursday thata 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian goods will take effect on March 4, reversing comments made one day earlier that suggesteda delay until April.
Why the change? Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnicksaid last month that if the two countries made progress on border security, there could be room for negotiation. But Trump claims drugs are still “pouring into our country”and added, “We cannot allow this scourge to continue to harm the USA.” He also blamed China for the flow of fentanyl and announced that he would add an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods on the same date.
The reality: US border data showsa 97% decline in fentanyl seizures coming from Canada from December to January. In that time, Canada began deploying its $1.3 billion border security package and appointed a fentanyl czar. Canada’s ambassador to the US, Kirsten Hillmann, also noted that illegal migration from Canada dropped by 90% in recent months, a fact that apparently was positively received in Washington.
What’s next? Canadian public safety officials are in Washington, DC, this week to present evidence of Canada’s progress in a last-ditch attempt to keep tariffs at bay. Additional tariffs on steel and aluminum tariffs are due to stack on top of the 25% tariffs starting March 12.
Could things change again? Based on Trump’s previous flip-flops, anything is possible. For now, industries on both sides of the border are preparing for the worst.
The case for Trump's tariffs
What will President-Elect Donald Trump’s election win mean for the US economy? After years of inflation and stagnating wage growth, millions of voters elected Trump off the back of his promise to usher in a “golden age of America.” Trump has vowed to raise tariffs, slash business regulation, and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, policies he says will put Americans first. But what will that mean practically for workers and consumers? On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer is joined by Oren Cass, the founder and chief economist of the conservative think tank American Compass, who thinks Trump’s tariff plan will be a step in the right direction. Many economists argue that Trump's tariff plans will raise consumer prices and spark a global trade war, but Cass argues they're a necessary correction that will incentivize domestic manufacturing, reduce the deficit, and counter China’s unfair trade practices.
“If you actually believe that making things in America matters, then we are going to have to find a way to put a thumb on the scale for getting more of that investment back here,” Cass explains, “And I think that's what a tariff can help do.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
How Trump's tariffs could help (or hurt) the US economy
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
- Ian Explains: Has a US president ever been arrested before Trump? ›
- Ian Explains: Will foreign policy decide the 2024 US election? ›
- Ian Explains: Who does China and Russia want to win the US election, Biden or Trump? ›
- Ian Explains: Trump's Republican competition ›
- Canada tariff: Is Trump undermining America’s closest allies? - GZERO Media ›
- Did Wall Street get Trump wrong? Ian Bremmer explains - GZERO Media ›
The Graphic Truth: US-China: Cold War or Cold Cash?
In the 10 years since Xi Jinping took power as China’s leader, trade volumes between the world’s top two economies have continued to grow. The same is true of Chinese trade with key US allies like the EU and, to a lesser extent, Japan.
In fact, US-China trade has continued to rise despite the Great US-China Trade War of 2018-2020, when the Trump administration and Beijing slapped tariffs on some $730 billion of each other’s goods. In 2022, US-China trade reached a dizzying record high of $689 billion. For comparison with the actual Cold War — US-Soviet trade throughout the entire 1980s amounted to less than $50 billion.
That said, while overall trade continues to rise between China on one side and the US and its allies on the other, this trade is steadily becoming less important as a part of China’s overall global commerce. That is, China is relying ever more on trade with the rest of the world, and less on Uncle Sam and friends.
To show what that looks like, we track China’s trade with the US, EU, and Japan, and look at how that has figured into China’s total trade between 2012 and now.
A Cold War may come one day, but for now, cold cash is still king.