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The president-elect’s opening salvo in trade and border talks with the United States’ neighbors is casting a harsh light on the North American alliance.
By Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Simon Romero
Matina Stevis-Gridneff is The Times’s Canada bureau chief, and Simon Romero reports on Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
If President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threat of hefty tariffs on Canada and Mexico was intended as a divide-and-conquer strategy, early signs show that it might be working.
After his missive on Monday, in which he said he planned to impose a 25 percent tariff on all imports from both of the United States’ neighbors, Ottawa and Mexico City followed starkly different approaches.
Mexico took a tough stance, threatening to retaliate with its own tariffs on U.S. goods. Canada, instead, emphasized that it was much closer aligned to the United States than Mexico.
The trade agreement between the three North American nations has been carefully maintained over the past three decades through a delicate balance between the United States and its two key allies.
As Mr. Trump prepares to take office, his willingness to tear that up to pressure the two countries on migration could open the door to the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement being replaced by separate bilateral deals with the United States.
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