China, Mexico and Canada already know that Trump will resort to trade war to fulfill his election promises.

According to the latest U.S. Treasury data, China accounts for 18% of all imports arriving in the United States, while Mexico and Canada each account for about 13%. Thus, the countries on which Trump anticipated his aggressive tariff policy These are the three main North American electricity providers.. On this list, Germany is in fourth place with around 5%, but so far Europe has been spared the first round of threats.

Effects on the consumer

The Budget Lab at Yale University, a prestigious Ivy League entity, estimates that the cost of tariffs for consumers proposed by Trump could reach up to $1,200 in loss of purchasing power, based on an average based on 2023 turnover.

Also outside of academia, some analysts warn that the effects of this protectionist policy will fall into the pockets of citizens. According to financial institution Barclays, the proposed tariffs would increase consumer prices by 0.4 percentage points. And the Peterson Institute for International Economics warns that the impact will be most visible in poorer sections of society, while those with greater purchasing power will be able to avoid the effects.

Among traders, they are going in the same direction: “There are very few consumer electronics products that are not imported. These are goods that people need and higher prices won’t help,” recently warned the CEO of Best Buy, the country’s leading electronics store network, who confirmed that the price increases would be ” passed on to customers.

However, two months before Trump’s inauguration, it is worth asking whether the early and inaccurate announcement of customs tariffs is not, more than a measure intended to be applied with all its side effects, a weapon of pressure to pave the way for new customs tariffs. the Washington administration towards other objectives.

Renegotiation strategy

First of all because the customs duties of 25% on goods from Mexico and Canada would break the trade pact of the three North American countries -known as the USMCA-, an agreement forged during Trump’s first term and which includes a forecast in 2026.

At the same time, Trump previously threatened to impose the same tariffs on Mexico in 2019, although he eventually withdrew it when the Mexican government, then led by Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, pledged to send more military personnel to the border with Guatemala to contain the departure of migrants bound for the United States.

“On January 20, as one of my first executive orders, I will sign all necessary documents to impose on Mexico and Canada a 25% tariff on all products arriving in the United States and its borders ridiculously open. Thousands of people transit through Mexico. and Canada, bringing crime and drugs to levels never seen before,” Trump warned on his social media this week.

The end of the announcement, which is not accompanied by further details, suggests that it is about a pressure tool similar to that of 2019.

In fact, instead of tying these tariffs to specific economic goals, he added that they would remain in effect “until drugs, particularly fentanyl, and illegal immigrants put an end to the invasion of our country.

So, a few days after the announcement, Trump indicated that he had spoken with the newly elected president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaumwho had agreed to stop the flow of immigrants, according to the American. Although she only said that she had reviewed the measures already implemented.

After the conversation between the two leaders became known, the fall of the Mexican peso – which reached 2% – was contained.

Likewise, Sheinbaum warned that A hike in customs duties would harm both countries: “The main exporters from Mexico to the United States are General Motors, Stellantis and Ford Motor Company, which arrived in Mexico 80 years ago. Why impose a tax on them that puts them in danger? “This is not acceptable and would lead to inflation and job losses in the United States and Mexico.”

He the automotive sector would be among the most affected since a large part of branded cars sold in the United States are manufactured in Mexico, a country that also supplies food products to its North American neighbor, whose citizens consider the soaring prices in the basket as one of the biggest problems in the country.

“The number of points of friction with Mexico is simply enormous,” Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute for International Economics recently warned.

Canada: common front against China

As for Canada, Trump’s intention with his tariff threat is to accelerate a common front between the two countries against China’s trade policy, a point that The Economist magazine considers plausible since Justin Trudeau himself even, Prime Minister of Canada, pointed in the same direction. recently.

Among the objectives that the future tenant of the White House would seek with his commercial pressure is that of stopping the flow of opioids, mainly fentanyl, from China.

Fentanyl crisis

The crisis of fentanyl addiction which affects countless cities in Canada and the United States, such as Vancouver and Philadelphia, has part of its origin in Chinaa world power in the production of chemical ingredients used by international mafias to produce drugs, increasingly lethal and in very dangerous combinations. At the same time, Chinese criminal groups have become the main players in drug money laundering networks.

For years, some analysts have pointed out that the fentanyl crisis in the United States is a the modern “opium war” and even the Biden administration has already tried to negotiate control measures with Beijing, without much result.

Trump, as has been his habit for a decade, is not giving many details after his grandiose announcements on social media, but the context and reading between the lines suggest that his protectionist policies involve pressure measures with other objectives than the purely economic.