Trump is threatening to impose broad tariffs of 25% on all imports from Canada and Mexico. This would come on the 30th anniversary of the NAFTA agreement, when the US zeroed out tariffs on the North American space.
Also duties of 10% are waiting for imports from China. Here Trump is already moving away from previous threats of 60% tariffs. It would be too strong a blow to the US economy. But he will try to squeeze his neighbors, dependent on the American market, in a trade war.
Trump is demanding that Mexico and Canada stop the flow of migrants and drugs. In Canada, the issue of migration is also very acute now – already 25% of the population was born outside the country. The wave of illegal migration across the usually sleepy northern border of the United States is also increasing.
With Mexico, Trump can bring the situation to an open conflict. After all, he plans to organize a decertification operation, with strikes on the infrastructure of criminal syndicates along the southern border. Opioids flow through it, killing 100,000 Americans each year. That’s why Trump sees the cartels as the main threat to the United States.
Relations with Mexico, already very strained, are going to be permanently damaged. It will be difficult to fight the cartels – they already receive weapons from all over the world, including javelins from Ukraine. In Canada, Trump will seek a regime change – Trudeau’s resignation and new elections where the right-wing will win. In the meantime, they will be strangled by tariffs – however, given the close interconnectedness of the three North American economies, this will come as a shock to the entire continent.
