Trump tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China begin Saturday, White House says

In an apparent ending to weeks of intense speculation, the White House confirmed Friday that President Donald Trump will be leveling aggressive tariffs this weekend on major U.S. trading partners.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Trump will be leveling 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada as well as a 10% duty on China, in retaliation for “the illegal fentanyl that they have sourced and allowed to distribute into our country.”

The White House provided few details on exactly how the levies will be meted out, saying that they will be available for public inspection at some point Saturday.

Stocks, which had been positive earlier in the session, fell on the news, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 200 points, or about 0.5%. However, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite stayed positive.

“These are promises made and promises kept by the president,” Leavitt said.

There was no word on potential exemptions to the tariffs; the White House denied an earlier Reuters report that there would be at lease some exclusions rather than simply blanket measures covering all products.

Together, the U.S. does about $1.6 trillion in annual business with the three countries. Trump is seeking to use the tariffs as both bargaining chips and methods to affect foreign policy changes, specifically the immigration and drug trade issues.

“We’ve got the Super Bowl coming up, and eerily, the amount of people that fit in the [New Orleans] Superdome are almost exactly equal to the number of people dying every year here in America from fentanyl, and that comes from China and Mexico,” Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro told CNBC in an interview earlier Friday. “This is why we have these kind of discussions.”

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