Biden Urges Trump to Reconsider Tariffs Against Canada, Mexico

President Joe Biden speaks to reporters as he visits the Nantucket Fire Department in Nantucket, Mass. on Nov. 28, 2024. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

President Joe Biden said Thursday that he hopes President-elect Donald Trump will reconsider his plan to impose tariffs against Canada and Mexico, with Biden saying that the tariffs would damage America’s relationship with its two neighbors and close allies.

“I hope he rethinks it. I think it’s a counterproductive thing to do,” Biden told reporters on Nov. 28 in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Speaking during a Thanksgiving day visit to a fire department in Nantucket, Biden cited geopolitical factors in urging Trump to reconsider slapping tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

“We have an unusual situation in America. We’re surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and two allies: Mexico and Canada,” Biden said. “The last thing we need to do is begin to screw up those relationships. I think we’ve got them in a good place.”

Acknowledging that there is “a lot more to do” on the issue of illegal immigration, Biden said the border security situation has improved in recent months, with the number of illegal crossings having dropped “considerably to what they were when [Trump] was in office.”

Trump on Tuesday said he would issue executive orders soon after assuming office that would impose a 25 percent tariff on all imported goods from Canada and Mexico. He accused the two countries of failing to take adequate action to prevent fentanyl and illegal immigrants from flowing into the United States. The president-elect also pledged to impose additional tariffs on China, citing Beijing’s broken promises to halt Chinese-made fentanyl from being trafficked into the country.

In response, officials from China, Canada, and Mexico said Trump’s proposed tariffs risk economic harm.

At the same time, Canada’s public safety minister promised more action to bolster border security and to further crack down on cross-border drug trafficking, while Trump said that Mexico’s president promised to prevent illegal immigrants from going to the southern border. A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington told BBC that China denies knowingly allowing fentanyl to flow into the United States.

The latest data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show that the number of people caught crossing the U.S. border illegally has dropped in recent months, with 144,666 total nationwide encounters recorded in September 2024. That’s close to the 144,116 encounters recorded in May 2019, the month with the highest number of illegal border crossers encountered during the Trump presidency.

However, annual statistics show that the total number of enforcement encounters during Biden’s presidency—roughly 10.8 million—is about three times higher than under Trump (around 3 million). These figures do not include the number of gotaways, with some estimates of the true number of illegal immigrants who entered the United States in the past four years exceeding 20 million.

During his first term, Trump used the tariffs or the threat of tariffs as a bargaining tactic to pressure countries into renegotiating trade deals that he felt unfairly disadvantaged the United States. Trump imposed tariffs on China in 2018 to address perceived unfair trade practices, such as trade imbalances and intellectual property theft, ultimately leading to a trade deal in 2020 that reduced some tariffs in exchange for China’s promise to buy more U.S. goods.

Also, Trump imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and Mexico in 2018 to pressure the two countries to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, resulting in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in 2019, at which point he lifted the tariffs.

Currently, a number of Trump allies have suggested that the president-elect’s latest tariff threats are a similar tactic to pressure countries into action that aligns with his agenda, which includes stopping the flow of illegal immigrants and deadly drugs into the United States.