Washington, United States:
President Donald Trump delayed the start of the rates on Mexico and Canada on Monday for a month after the American neighbors had closed last-minute deals to tighten border measures against the stream of migrants and the drug fentanyl.
Worldwide stock markets were set as Trump’s threat to wipe 25 percent levies about exports from Canada and Mexico to the United States, led to the fear of a global trade war.
But after calls with Trump only a few hours before the American rates were to take effect, both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum struck deals for a delay.
Trump said that after “very friendly” conversations with Sheinbaum he “immediately paused the rates on Mexico, and that his counterpart had agreed to send 10,000 troops to the American Mexico limit.
Tensions seemed higher between the US and Canada, but two separate calls Trump later said that he was “very satisfied” and announced a 30 -day stopping in the rates.
“Canada has agreed to ensure that we have a safe northern border and finally the deadly scourge of drugs such as Fentanyl who enter our country,” he said.
Conversations about definitive deals would continue with both countries, he added.
After the “good call”, Trudeau said that Canada uses nearly 10,000 front line officers to help secure the border, to mention drug cartels as terrorists, to appoint a “fentanyl tsar” and to limit money laundering.
It was not clear the real size of the changes to the Canadian border, since only these December authorities there said they had already deployed 8,500 employees.
Stocks Binking
China stays in the shooting line for Trump rates. It is confronted with another 10 percent task in addition to existing taxes.
The US President said that last-minute conversations between Washington and Beijing will probably be held “in the next 24 hours” to prevent new rates for Chinese import.
Canada, China and Mexico are the three largest trading partners in the United States and Trump’s endangered rates have sent shock waves through the global economy.
The three most important indices of Wall Street fell sharply in early deals, but clawed background after the announcement of Trump about the Mexico deal.
The stock markets in London, Paris and Frankfurt ended in the red when Trump warned the weekend that the European Union would be the following in the shooting line and no rates about Great Britain.
The Mexican peso and the Canadian dollar also fell against the Greenback, while oil jumped despite Trump that limited the levy on Canada’s energy to prevent a peak in fuel prices.
The White House said earlier that there had been a “many conversations” during the weekend.
“This is not a trade war, this is a drug war,” the national director of the Economic Council Kevin Hassett told CNBC and complained that “the Canadians seemed to have misunderstood the clear language.”
However, the US government figures show that only a minimal amount of drugs will come via Canada.
51st state?
Canada had sworn to respond strongly to the rates.
The most populated province of Ontario on Monday had forbidden American companies to offer dozens of billions of dollars in government contracts – and a deal with Trump Ally Elon Musk’s Starlink dumped.
Trump recently raised the pressure by questioning the existence of Canada – again calling on Monday to become the 51st American state.
A political crisis in the Canadian government about Trump’s tariff threats led Trudeau to announce earlier this month that he would also stop. Canadians are already confronted with elections in April.
The US President – who said that rate is the “most beautiful word in the dictionary” – goes even further in his second term on the taxes than in his first.
He insisted that the impact would be borne by foreign exporters without being passed on to American consumers, despite most experts who say the opposite.
But the 78-year-old of billionaire recognized when he returned from a weekend in his resort in Florida Sunday that Americans may feel economic “pain”.
Trump has also used rates as a threat to achieve his broader policy goals, the most recently when he said he would hit them on Colombia when the American military aircraft carried deported migrants would turn back.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)