Treasury chief urges Canada, Mexico to match US tariffs on China as deadline looms

David McGuintypublic Safety Minister

We've made some very serious adjustments, investments, improvements on the border, and we spent the entire week for four days of meetings, communicating those results, communicating those improvements to our counterparts here in Washington,

McGuinty told reporters after meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and border czar Tom Homan

Pressuring, coercion and threat is not the right way to deal with China. Instead, mutual respect is the basic prerequisite,

embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said in a statement to Reuters

I do think one very interesting proposal that the Mexican government has made is perhaps matching the US on our China tariffs,

Bessent told Bloomberg Television in an interview

I think it would be a nice gesture if the Canadians did it also so in a way we could have fortress North America from the flood of Chinese imports that's coming out of the most unbalanced economy in the history of modern times,

Bessent said in an interview with Bloomberg TV

There are ongoing discussions with the Chinese, Mexico and Canada,

a White House official told Reuters on Thursday

China is one of the countries with the strictest and most thorough anti-narcotics policy in the world,

the statement read

But the US side has always ignored these facts,

it said

If the U.S. side insists on going its own way, the Chinese side will take all necessary countermeasures to defend its legitimate rights and interests,

China's commerce ministry said

Justin Trudeaucanadian Prime Minister

We will continue to do that work and do everything necessary to avoid these tariffs coming in, but like I said, if on Tuesday there are unjustified tariffs brought in on Canada, we will have an immediate and extremely strong response, as Canadians expect,

Trudeau said

And that Canada is not the source of problems for the United States,

he added

The tariffs that the president speaks of for next week are centered around the fentanyl crisis that they're facing in the United States, but that we are also facing in Canada,

he added

Putting tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico risks undermining America's relationship with our closest trading partners and allies and has the potential to affect the price and availability of everything from avocados to automobiles,

NFTC President Jake Colvin said in a Feb 1 statement

China firmly opposes this and has taken corresponding countermeasures, which was a necessary move to safeguard its own legitimate rights and interests,

Wang said in a letter to newly confirmed US Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer

We are working together to reach agreements before the fatal dates,

Mexico's Deputy Foreign Trade Minister Luis Rosendo Gutierrez told Reuters

Adding new and expanded tariffs will harm working families."

Tiffany Smith, vice-president of global trade policy for the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) in Washington DC, told China Daily

We made tremendous amounts of progress because of those tariffs. China paid us hundreds of billions of dollars. Billions!"

Trump said of his previous levies

How you treat us is how you get treated,

said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in a Fox News interview Wednesday about the reciprocal levies

We're going to have reciprocal tariffs,

Trump said about the EU

Justin Trudeaucanadian Prime Minister

There is no emergency for the United States at the border with Canada when it comes to fentanyl, and that is exactly what we are demonstrating at this time,

Trudeau said in Montreal

There was a sharp increase in the mentions of trade and tariffs, back to a level unseen since 2019,

said Stephanie Guichard, a senior economist at the Conference Board