President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to impose new tariffs on Mexico if the country does not step up its enforcement actions.
President Trump said in a White House statement that the first round of tariffs would begin on June 10 at 5% “on all goods imported from Mexico.”
The statement said President Trump would carry out his threat under authority from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and that he would lift tariffs only “if the illegal migration crisis is alleviated through effective actions taken by Mexico.”
The statement warned further that if Mexico did not act as President Trump demanded, tariffs would go up to 10% by July, 15% by August, 20% by September and reach a permanent level of 25% by October.
The announcement came on Thursday evening, which earlier President Trump had teased to reporters as a “big league” announcement on immigration. The news was first reported by The Washington Post.
“We are going to do something very dramatic on the border because people are coming into our country,” the President told reporters as he left the White House on Thursday morning.
President Trump has threatened Mexico with tariffs in the past as he has grown frustrated with the flow of Central American migrants to the southern US border. He last made this threat in April amid another threat to close the border with Mexico. After walking back that threat, he suggested that tariffs would be a more effective means to pressure Mexico to do more.
“Before we close the border we’ll put the tariffs on the cars,” President Trump told reporters. “I don’t think we’ll ever have to close the border, because the penalty of tariffs on cars coming into the United States from Mexico at 25% will be massive.”
In the last several days there has been a mass of migrants apprehended crossing the border illegally. On Wednesday, a group of more than 1,000 were apprehended by the Border Patrol, which one Department of Homeland Security official said was the largest group of migrants ever apprehended together. According to the official, the migrants, made up of mostly families, turned themselves in.
There is growing frustration with Mexico in the administration. US officials are not seeing a corresponding decrease in apprehensions at the US border with Mexico as a result of the country’s enforcement actions at its own southern border.
If President Trump makes good on a tariff threat against Mexico, it is not clear how that would affect the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal, which the administration is pushing Congress to ratify.
The Trump administration also recently released the principles of an immigration bill that would tighten asylum criteria and shift to a merit-based immigration system. But that plan has little chance on Capitol Hill and has been dismissed by even Republican lawmakers as more of a statement of principles than legislation intended to become law.
President Trump continues to be frustrated by the difficulty of changing immigration law through Congress and with the asylum process, which he has complained is rife with fraud.
