On the deadline of his commitment to impose tariffs, Trump states that he will comply with his campaign promise

CNN
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On Friday afternoon, more or less at the same time as a delegation of senior Canadian officials prepared to meet with the border of President Donald Trump in an attempt to avoid the imposition of new tariffs, Trump himself told them from Far: do not bother.

“No,” he said when a journalist asked him in the oval office if there was something that Canada, Mexico or China could do to avoid the new tariffs he had promised to apply before February 1. “No right now.”

After threatening for months with imposing strong tariffs on the residents of the United States, Trump’s promise to carry them should not surprise. With the expired deadline, officials said the tariffs would be available at noon this Saturday. However, until the last hours before the deadline of early month, many in Wall Street and in the Capitol – not to mention Ottawa and Mexico City – maintained the hope that Trump would turn back.

The delegation of senior Canadian officials had been in Washington for several days, meeting with several government officials – including border tsar, Tom Homan – to try to avoid the imposition of 25% tariffs on all Canadian products that Trump had promised for the February 1.

Touring Washington armed with videos and documents that showed a reinforced border between the United States and Canada, the Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, hoped to be able to show the measures that her country had taken to meet Trump’s demands that she would be done more for stop illegal immigration flows.

However, it was never very clear what Canada and Mexico could do to avoid the new tariffs, and even less for the negotiators of those countries, who spent most of January working to find out what their options were, if there were, To appease Trump’s demands.

And at the end of a week in which the first great reverse of Trump’s second mandate occurred – on an order of the budget office to freeze billions of dollars in subsidies and federal loans, which was terminated after confusion and generalized chaos – there were Few doubts in the minds of many Trump allies that he would continue with his tariff promise in some way.

“We are not looking for a concession,” Trump said Friday at the Oval Office. “We will simply see what happens.”

Trump’s statement that he did not seek concessions hardly seemed the last word on the matter. When he first warned in November of his plans to impose tariffs, he said that “they would remain in force until drugs, particularly fentanyl, and all illegal foreigners stop this invasion of our country!”

It is likely that this Saturday’s measures open a new commercial battle, one that is fought on issues that have little to do with trade itself. Instead, Trump seems determined to use tariffs as a weapon to apply their internal policies: stop the flows of undocumented immigrants and drugs to the United States.

Few inside the White House came to believe that Trump would let his own term of February 1 pass without doing anything.

The tariffs, after all, are one of the few policies that Trump has systematically supported for decades, a rare line of continuity since his days as a New York real estate promoter until his stage as a public office (another is immigration). As a candidate, he swore that he would use tariffs – ”the most beautiful word in the dictionary” – to exert influence abroad.

Long before his official investiture, Trump barely gave indications that he was going to retract his threats. The executives waiting to dissuade him from their plans obtained little response, and Trump’s advisors said bluntly that it was unlikely that the president changed course.

A 12 -hour episode last weekend was also illustrative for the president and his team. After the president imposed crushing tariffs on Colombia after Gustavo Petro’s refusal to accept deported repatriation flights in military airplanes, the South American country almost immediately reculled. The rapid reverse demonstrated the effectiveness of tariffs as a negotiation tool, according to officials.

This Saturday’s tariffs suppose the departure pistol of what could become a global commercial war, with the potential of an increase in costs, the interruption of supply chains and the loss of jobs. Even Trump recognized the possibility of adverse consequences for American consumers.

“There could be some temporary interruption, in the short term, and people will understand it,” Trump said Friday when he was pressed by journalists about the cost of tariffs that will be transferred to importers and, by extension, to consumers. “But tariffs are going to make us very rich and very strong, and we will treat other countries very fairly.”

The small print will be fundamental. The Trump spokeswoman suggested on Friday that there will be no period of grace once they enter into force at some point this Saturday. But it did not specify whether the president’s order would establish any exemption for specific industries or products, a critical detail that could drastically affect the impact of new tariffs on continental trade.

Trump himself said in the Oval Office that in mid -February additional tariffs could reach chip imports, pharmaceutical products, steel, aluminum, copper, oil and gas – along with tariffs to the European Union -, threats that few would discard given given His willingness to move forward with tariffs to North America and China this Saturday.

Within the White House, key advisors had advocated a hard approach in a first demonstration of Trump’s will to move forward with one of his main campaign promises: use tariffs such as garrote to extract concessions, including the main allies of USA.

Howard Lutnick, new Trump’s Secretary of Commerce and Executive Exalt of Fitzgerald Financial Services Firm, was one of the main supporters of the maximum tariff approach, according to people familiar with the matter. Stephen Miller, the influential head of cabinet with broad political powers, was another of the main defenders in the west wing of a Trump tariff policy that opened strongly.

However, even Lutnick recognized during his confirmation audiences in the Senate this week that there were escape routes so that Canada and Mexico avoid the hard tariffs Trump promised.

“If we are your biggest commercial partner, show us respect. They close their border and end the fentanyl that enters this country. So it is not a tariff per se; It is an internal policy action, ”said Lutnick.

“If they execute it, there will be no tariff,” he added.

Not all Trump’s economic advisors were so belligerent. Market mentality officials such as Scott Besent, Treter Secretary of Trump, have advocated a softer approach. Specifically, Besent advocated starting tariffs at 2.5% and gradually increasing them, according to Financial Times, a plan that Trump hastened to say that he would reject.

“No, that would not be acceptable to me,” Trump told journalists. He added that he would want it to be “a lot, much older.”