Editor's Note: Monday morning, Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum posted on X that she had a "good conversation" with Donald Trump and would be sending National Guard members to prevent drug trafficking, and that the tariffs would be postponed by one month. Our latest story can be found here. Our original story continues below.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that Americans could feel “some pain” from the emerging trade war triggered by his newly imposed tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China, and claimed that Canada would “cease to exist” without its trade surplus with the United States.
The trade penalties that Trump signed Saturday at his Florida resort caused a mix of panic, anger and uncertainty, and threatened to rupture a decades-old partnership on trade in North America while further straining relations with China.
Trump on Sunday night returned from Florida and threatened to impose steeper tariffs elsewhere, telling reporters that the import taxes will “definitely happen” with the European Union and possibly with the United Kingdom as well.
Why are eggs so expensive, and will prices drop anytime soon?
In a recent interview with MSNBC, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said people in Illinois and across the country will "pay the price for what Donald Trump is doing."
"We get most of our natural gas and gasoline from Canada," Pritzker said. "When you impose a 25% tariff, you are imposing a tariff on working families."
Local
No other state in the nation imports more goods to Canada than the Land of Lincoln, and Illinois is one of the Top 5 states in exports to both Canada and Mexico.
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) February 2, 2025
All together, Illinois exports support 800,000 jobs – jobs now at risk thanks to Trump’s Tax on Working Families.
But what exactly are tariffs, how do they work, and what products could be impacted?
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Will prices for goods go up?
Trump brushed aside retaliatory measures from Canada, saying, “If they want to play the game, I don’t mind. We can play the game all they want.” Trump said he plans to speak with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts on Monday.
“WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!),” Trump said in a social media post. “BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.”
His administration has not said what specific improvements would need to be seen in stopping illegal immigration and the smuggling of fentanyl to merit the removal of the tariffs that Trump imposed under the legal justification of an economic emergency. But Trump, speaking to reporters after Air Force One landed, said that the trade imbalances with Canada and Mexico would also need to be erased as a condition for lifting the tariffs.
The president also tried to clarify his post about the possible inflation, saying on Sunday: “We may have in the short term, a little pain, and people understand that. But long term, the United States has been ripped off by virtually every country in the world.”
The tariffs are set to launch Tuesday and triggered confusion as Canada’s U.S. ambassador, Kirsten Hillman, told ABC News that her country was perplexed by the move because “we view ourselves as your neighbor, your closest friend, your ally.”
In his Truth Social post, Trump took particular aim at Canada, which responded with retaliatory measures. Trump is placing a 25% tariff on Canadian goods, with a 10% tax on oil, natural gas and electricity. Canada is imposing 25% tariffs, more than $155 billion Canadian (US$105 billion), on U.S. products, including alcohol and fruit.
Despite Trump’s assertions that the U.S. does not need Canada, one-quarter of the oil that America consumes per day is from its ally to the north. He reiterated his false claim that America subsidizes Canada by running a trade imbalance, a reflection in part of Canada exporting energy to the U.S.
Trump contended that without that surplus, “Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country."
"Harsh but true!" he wrote on social media. "Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State. Much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada — AND NO TARIFFS!”
What goods will be affected?
From an ice cream parlor in California to a medical supply business in North Carolina to a T-shirt vendor outside Detroit, U.S. businesses are bracing to take a hit from the taxes on imports from Canada, Mexico and China — America’s three biggest trading partners.
The Budget Lab at Yale University estimates Trump’s tariffs would cost the average American household $1,000 to $1,200 in annual purchasing power.
Gregory Daco, chief economist at the tax and consulting firm EY, calculates the tariffs would increase inflation, which was running at a 2.9% annual rate in December, by 0.4 percentage points this year. Daco also projects the U.S. economy, which grew 2.8% last year, would fall by 1.5% this year and 2.1% in 2026 “as higher import costs dampen consumer spending and business investment.’’
The Penny Ice Creamery in Santa Cruz, California, has had to hike prices of its ice cream, including popular flavors “strawberry pink peppercorn’’ and “chocolate caramel sea salt,’’ repeatedly in recent years as an inflationary surge increased the cost of its supplies.
“I feel bad about always having to raise prices,’’ co-owner Zach Davis said. “We were looking forward to inflation coming down, the economy stabilizing in 2025 ... Now with the tariffs, we may be back at it again.’’
Trump tariffs, Davis said, threaten to drive up the cost of the mostly made-in-China refrigerators, freezers and blenders he’ll need if Penny Ice Creamery goes ahead with plans to add to its six shops. He still has painful memories of the extra equipment costs the company had to absorb when Trump slapped massive tariffs on China during his first term.
The new tariffs will also raise the price of a customer favorite — sprinkles — which Penny Ice Creamery imports from a company in Whitby, Ontario. Tacking a 25% import tax on even something as small as that can damage a small business like his.
“The margins are so slim,’’ he said. “Being able to offer that add-on can maybe generate an additional 10 cents in profit per scoop. If a tariff wipes that out, that can really be the difference between being profitable and being break-even and even being underwater by the end of the year.’’
In Asheville, North Carolina, Casey Hite, CEO of Aeroflow Health, expects to take a hit because his company gets more than half its supplies, including breast pumps, from Chinese manufacturers, providing them to American patients through insurance plans. Aeroflow Health gets paid by insurers at pre-negotiated rates, put in place before Trump decided on his tariffs.
Hite said the tax on Chinese imports would hit the company’s finances, forcing it either to purchase cheaper and lower-quality products or pass higher costs along via higher health insurance premiums. Those might take two years to materialize, Hite said, but eventually they would hit consumers’ budgets.
“It will impact the patients,” Hite said. “In time, patients pay more for the products.”
Even the made-in-USA absorbent incontinence pads Aeroflow Health buys aren’t safe from Trump’s import taxes. They may include pulp from Canada and plastics and packaging from China, according to the Aeroflow Health, which warns of “turbulences” from the tariffs.
“Is this going to affect our business? You bet it is,’’ said Linda Schlesinger-Wagner, who owns skinnytees, a women’s apparel company in Birmingham, Michigan, north of Detroit, that imports clothing from China. She said the 10% tax would increase her costs, though she plans to absorb the extra expense instead of passing it along to customers.
“I don’t like what’s going on,’’ she said, referring to the broader impact of the tariffs. “And I think people are going to be truly shocked at the pricing they’re going to see on the cars, on the lumber, on the clothes, on the food. This is going to be a mess.’’
More than 75% of Canada’s exports go to the US
Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is encouraging Canadians to buy more Canadian goods, and says Trump’s moves will only cause pain across North America. More than 75% of Canada’s exports go to the U.S. Canada will first target alcohol, cosmetics and paper products; a second round later will include passenger vehicles, trucks, steel and aluminum products, certain fruits and vegetables, beef, pork, dairy products and more.
Canada is the largest export market for 36 states and Mexico is the largest trading partner of the U.S.
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, also announced new tariffs and suggested the U.S. should do more within its own borders to address drug addiction. She and Trudeau spoke after Trump’s announcement and agreed “to enhance the strong bilateral relations” between Canada and Mexico, according to the prime minister’s office.
The Chinese government said it would take steps to defend its economic interests and intends to file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization.
Could tariffs impact inflation?
For Trump, the open question is whether inflation could be a political pressure point that would cause him to back down. As a candidate, Trump repeatedly hammered Democrats over the inflation under President Joe Biden that resulted from supply chain issues during the coronavirus pandemic, the Biden administration’s own spending to spur the recovery and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Trump said his previous four years as president had low inflation, so the public should expect the same if he came back to the White House. But he also said specifically that higher inflation would stagger the U.S. as a nation, a position from which he now appears to be retreating with the promise of even more tariffs to come.
The U.S. president did not offer details Sunday about when he would impose tariffs elsewhere, but he said they would be coming “pretty soon” for the EU, which is also composed of U.S. allies.
Larry Summers, treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, said the tariffs were a “self-inflicted wound to the American economy.”
He told CNN’s “Inside Politics” that “on the playground or in international relations, bullying is not an enduringly winning strategy. And that’s what this is.” And the ultimate winner, Summers suggested, would be Chinese leader Xi Jinping because “we’ve moved to drive some of our closest allies into his arms” and “we’re legitimating everything he’s doing by violating all the international norms that we set up.”
Outside analyses make clear that Trump’s tariffs would hurt the voters that he intended to help, meaning that he might ultimately need to find a resolution.
An analysis by the Budget Lab at Yale shows that if the tariffs were to continue, an average U.S. household would lose roughly $1,245 in income this year, in what would be the overall equivalent of a more than $1.4 trillion tax increase over the next 10 years.
Goldman Sachs, in a Sunday analyst note, stressed that the tariffs go into effect on Tuesday, which means they’re likely to proceed “though a last-minute compromise cannot be completely ruled out.”
The investment bank concluded that because of the possible economic damage and possible conditions for removal “we think it is more likely that the tariffs will be temporary but the outlook is unclear.”
What are tariffs?
Tariffs are a tax on imports.
In the U.S., tariffs aim to discourage companies importing goods from places like China by making them pay more for the items they are trying ship in.
They are typically charged as a percentage of the price a buyer pays a foreign seller. In the United States, tariffs are collected by Customs and Border Protection agents at 328 ports of entry across the country.
U.S. tariff rates range from passenger cars (2.5%) to golf shoes (6%). Tariffs can be lower for countries with which the United States has trade agreements. For example, most goods can move among the United States, Mexico and Canada tariff-free because of Trump’s US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.
Why were the tariffs imposed?
Trump’s orders say the tariffs are a consequence of illegal immigration and drug smuggling. Not everyone will agree with his reasoning, as U.S. government reports show that unauthorized border crossings from Mexico have fallen over the past year and seizures of fentanyl along the northern border are relatively low.
But Trump’s order on Mexico says that drug traffickers and the country’s government “have an intolerable alliance” that “endangers the national security of the United States, and we must eradicate the influence of these dangerous cartels.” His order on Canada says that Mexican cartels are operating in that country and claims despite the modest amount of fentanyl intercepted that it would be enough to kill “9.5 million Americans.” The order on China says that country’s government provides a “safe haven” for criminal organizations to “launder the revenues from the production, shipment, and sale of illicit synthetic opioids.”
Those are the stated legal reasons, but Trump has expressed a deep admiration to tariffs in general, claiming that they would make the United States wealthier even though they are tax hikes that can be passed along to consumers and businesses in the form of higher prices.