Canada and Mexico Move to Retaliate on Trump Tariff Orders

“We don’t want to be here,” Mr. Trudeau said in a somber televised address from Ottawa that evoked the deep bonds between the two neighbors and close trading partners. “We didn’t ask for this.”

Mr. Trudeau spoke hours after President Trump hit Canada and Mexico with tariffs of 25 percent on all goods, with a partial carve out for Canadian energy and oil exports. Mr. Trudeau said that Canada would swiftly impose its own “far-reaching” retaliatory tariffs of 25 percent on 155 billion Canadian dollars ($106 billion) worth of U.S. goods.

Canada on Sunday published a detailed list of all the U.S. goods imported into Canada that will be subjected to the tariff, including hundreds of products including honey, tomatoes, whiskey and peanut butter. Also on the list were garments, porcelain goods such as toilets and bath tubs, as well as refrigerators and dish washers.

Initial tariffs worth 30 billion Canadian dollars will start on Tuesday, when the U.S. tariffs go into effect, Mr. Trudeau said. That will be followed by tariffs on 125 billion Canadian dollars worth of goods in the next three weeks, a delay he said would allow Canadian businesses to prepare.

And Mr. Trudeau added that more measures were being considered, including curbing or taxing energy exports that the United States relies on.

Mr. Trudeau addressed Americans directly, saying that the U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods would harm them, too.

“This is a choice that, yes, will harm Canadians, but beyond that, it will have real consequences for you, the American people,” he said. “As I have consistently said, tariffs against Canada will put your jobs at risk, potentially shutting down American auto assembly plants and other manufacturing facilities.”

Canadian provinces, too, began to respond to the tariffs, with Ontario and Nova Scotia saying that they would pull American beer, wine and spirits from their government-owned liquor stores. British Columbia’s premier announced that the province would stop sales of alcohol produced in “red states.”

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario imports about 1 billion Canadian dollars, about $690 million, worth of U.S. products each year. But although few, if any, parts of Canada’s economy will be left unaffected by tariffs, but none are likely to experience more potential turmoil than the auto industry.

The sector employs about 125,000 Canadians and produces some 3,300 cars a day, more than 90 percent of which go to American buyers. Complicated supply chains mean Canadian auto parts can make repeated trips across the border with the United States and, in some cases, Mexico, making North American vehicles a stew of components from all three countries.

Within hours of the U.S. tariff announcement, a wave of economic patriotism was sweeping over Canada, with retailers putting Canadian flags on shelves with domestically produced products, lists of Canadian alternatives to U.S. goods circulating on social media, and leading politicians from across the spectrum urging citizens to “Buy Canadian!”

In his Saturday night address, Mr. Trudeau expressed regret that the United States and Canada nations, as well as Mexico — all signatories to a free-trade agreement — now find themselves in a trade war that will upend the flow of goods across North America.

The crisis finds Canada in a difficult political moment. Mr. Trudeau has said that he will resign as prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party when his party chooses a new leader, and automatically prime minister, in March. The Parliament is suspended until that time.

Despite the fraught political climate, though, the top contenders to replace Mr. Trudeau from within his own party, as well as the opposition leader vying to win the next federal election, have broadly coalesced around a national unity response to U.S. tariffs. The pain Canada will feel is real: Experts believe the tariffs that take effect on Tuesday will tip the country into a recession, putting hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk.

Part of Mr. Trudeau’s speech addressed Mr. Trump’s claim that Canada is responsible for a major influx of fentanyl and irregular migrants into the United States. In response, Mr. Trudeau presented recent data showing that only about 1 percent of fentanyl in the United States originates in Canada. He also said that about the same percentage of irregular crossings into the U.S. occur at the northern border.

But he also focused on the historically close ties between Canada and the U.S., including military cooperation in two world wars as well as the Korean War and the war in Afghanistan. “From the beaches of Normandy to the mountains of the Korean Peninsula, from the fields of Flanders to the streets of Kandahar, we have fought and died alongside you during your darkest hours,” he said.

“Sure, we’re going through a difficult time right now, and yeah, emotions may run high here and there, particularly around hockey games,” Mr. Trudeau added with a faint smile at another point in the speech. That was a reference to a National Hockey League game between the Ottawa Senators and the Minnesota Wild on Saturday, at which some Canadian fans appeared to boo as the U.S. national anthem was played.

“But I know we’re going to make it through this,” he added, “because we have the most successful partnership the world has ever seen.”

Ian Austen contributed reporting from Windsor, Ontario.

The W.T.O. has lost much of its ability to handle legal challenges, as the United States has blocked the appointment of judges since President Trump’s first term. The appellate body of the W.T.O. lost judges as their terms expired and has not been able to form a quorum to hear cases since the end of 2019.

W.T.O. can still form panels to compile reports on the merits of cases. But those reports can no longer go to the organization’s appellate body for a legally binding decision, which allows the country that wins to impose tariffs on the losing side.

When President Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods during his first term, China responded each time with tariffs on American exports, not waiting for W.T.O. authorization. But because China sells far more to the United States than it buys, China quickly ran out of American goods to put tariffs on.

On Saturday, President Trump said he imposed the tariffs on China in part to make it stop the flow of fentanyl and its ingredients to Mexico.

In China’s response, the Ministry of Commerce urged the United States to “view and handle its fentanyl and other issues in an objective and rational manner, rather than threatening other countries with tariffs.” And a little later, China’s foreign ministry defended its record on the issue, saying that China had led the world in 2019 when it imposed stringent regulations on fentanyl-related substances.

The Chinese government has argued that the true cause of an epidemic of fentanyl deaths in the United States is an American failure to curb drug addiction, rather than the large-scale production or export by China of chemicals used mainly by illegal labs in Mexico to make fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.

The commerce ministry’s statement concluded with a signal that China still wants a stable relationship with the United States, calling on Washington to “engage in frank dialogue, strengthen cooperation and manage differences on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect.”

In a statement, the White House said that Mexico’s government had “afforded safe havens for the cartels to engage in the manufacturing and transportation of dangerous narcotics,” which led to hundreds of thousands of American overdose deaths.

“This alliance endangers the national security of the United States, and we must eradicate the influence of these dangerous cartels,” the statement added.

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico took issue on Saturday night with that assertion, saying in a lengthy social media post: “We categorically reject the slander made by the White House against the Government of Mexico, accusing it of having alliances with criminal organizations.”

“If such an alliance exists anywhere, it is in the gun stores of the United States that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups,” Ms. Sheinbaum added. Mexico’s government has been waging a legal battle in the United States aimed at holding gun manufacturers responsible for aiding in the trafficking of weapons used by drug cartels.

Although Mexico’s federal government has rejected claims that it has anything resembling an alliance with cartels, concerns have been growing over its approach to dealing with organized crime and the drug trade.

Ms. Sheinbaum has recently stepped up actions targeting fentanyl production. In December, authorities captured 20 million doses of the drug, the country’s largest seizure of synthetic opioids.

But these moves come after years in which counternarcotics cooperation between the United States and Mexico was on the decline, reaching a low ebb during the administration of Ms. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Even as fentanyl overdose deaths in the United States were soaring, Mr. López Obrador falsely asserted that fentanyl was not produced in Mexico. He also put into a motion a security strategy called “hugs, not bullets,” which avoided large-scale confrontations with cartels. Instead, the focus was on addressing the root causes of violence, such as poverty. The strategy failed to significantly curb Mexico’s homicide rates.

At the same time, ties between drug cartels and local and state governments in Mexico have come under scrutiny.

At the federal level, the sentencing to over 38 years in prison in the United States of Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s top law enforcement official from 2001 to 2012, after his conviction on charges of taking bribes from the very drug cartels he was meant to be pursuing, shed light on the ease with which powerful officials could be bought off.

It remains to be seen what steps Ms. Sheinbaum’s government can take to appease Mr. Trump on the drug trade. In the meantime, the Trump administration is designating cartels as terrorist organizations, which could open the way to U.S. military attacks on cartels operating within Mexico.

Separately, a directive prohibiting C.D.C. employees from holding scientific meetings or communicating with other organizations or the public was indefinitely extended on Saturday, when it was expected to lapse, according to another email obtained by The Times.

The memo from Dr. Posner provided the exact language that the employees were to use when corresponding with a journal: “Consistent with the President’s Executive Order titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, I am removing myself as a coauthor from this submission.”

If all the authors on a paper were C.D.C. scientists, they were instructed to retract the article from consideration by the journal.

Larry Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Center on Global Health Law, said that the directive amounted to censorship, not just of government employees but of private citizens. He noted that withdrawal of the lead author would effectively kill publication of a paper even it had co-authors who were private scientists.

“It’s important to stress that scientific expression is at the core of First Amendment freedoms, as vital to the Constitution as artistic and political speech,” Mr. Gostin said. “The White House directive is positively Orwellian.”

On Wednesday, C.D.C. employees were directed to edit out any mention of the forbidden terms, resulting in the disappearance of thousands of pages on the agency’s website.

Some of the pages may return, scrubbed of the terms, but others — for instance, those on transgender health — were expected to remain absent.

“The information about transgender health being stripped from government websites is absolutely unbelievable,” said Dr. Richard Besser, who served as acting director of the C.D.C. in 2009.

“It’s hard to know where to start to talk about just how offensive this is, this attempt by the government to erase people from society,” he said.

Also missing are guidelines on contraception and the diagnosis and prevention of H.I.V. and sexually transmitted infections, as well as vaccine information sheets that doctors typically give to patients receiving the shots.

On Saturday night, nine members of a congressionally chartered committee of medical experts, the advisory committee to the C.D.C. director, wrote a joint letter pressing the agency’s acting director, Susan Monarez, to explain by Friday why the agency had stripped its website of the information and to meet with them as soon as possible. “As far as we are aware, these unprecedented actions have yet to be explained by C.D.C.,” they said.

The communications ban included the release of new recommendations, grant announcements and news releases. New issues of the C.D.C.’s esteemed in-house journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, have been held back for two Thursdays in a row. The publication had not missed a week since it began decades ago.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

The costs of that wager are coming painfully into view after Mr. Trump imposed the tariffs on Saturday, citing concerns over migrants and illicit narcotics entering the United States from Mexico.

“These drugs kill tens of thousands of Americans each year, including 75,000 deaths per year attributed to fentanyl alone,” the White House said in a statement, describing its reasoning for the tariffs.

Tariffs of 25 percent could reduce Mexico’s economic output growth by about two percentage points, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. If the tariffs are sustained over a significant amount of time, they could result in large-scale factory closures and job losses in Mexico, economists have warned.

Carlos Pérez Ricart, a political scientist at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City, called the tariffs the equivalent of a “bomb” in a social media post.

“Many production chains will simply cease to exist,” Dr. Pérez Ricart said, arguing that Mexican authorities need to reformulate the country’s industrial policy. “The suffering will be enormous. Recession is inevitable.”

Mexico’s economy is facing other headwinds, including the country’s largest budget deficit in decades, which limits the government’s ability to respond to a sharp decline in growth with social welfare programs and economic stimulus.

For the past several years, Mexico’s economy had grown increasingly intertwined with the United States. Pandemic-era supply chain disruptions led companies from around the world to open manufacturing plants in Mexico, near the U.S. market.

That near-shoring boom lifted Mexico past China as the United States’ largest trading partner in goods. Mexican political and business leaders argued that this integration made Mexico a reliable partner for the United States in countering China’s economic power.

But Mexico’s newfound economic importance to the United States appeared to mean little in the Trump administration’s recent deliberations.

The United States imposed a 10 percent tariff on goods imported from China, compared with a 25 percent tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada, with a slightly lower 10 percent tariff on Canadian energy exports.

Mexico had tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Trump administration that it was taking action to diminish China’s sway in Mexico’s economy, and that it was intensifying efforts to reduce the migration of people and the smuggling of illicit drugs into the United States. Now, in addition to the tariff-induced economic turbulence, the country faces pressure from the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration agenda.

Mexico may be forced to absorb greater numbers of its own deported citizens and deportees from other countries. And the Trump administration has threatened to carry out U.S. military attacks on drug cartels operating in Mexico. Mr. Trump already designated cartels as terrorist organizations in an executive order, which could open the way for military intervention.

Energy imported from Mexico will face stiffer tariffs of 25 percent, in line with other goods.

The United States is the largest oil producer in the world, but its refineries were designed to run on a variety of different types of oil. All told, roughly 40 percent of the crude oil that is refined domestically comes from other countries, according to the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, an industry trade association.

Canadian oil has been of greater concern to U.S. companies because it makes up a much larger share of U.S. imports — roughly 60 percent as of November, compared with around 7 percent for Mexico, according to the latest numbers from the Energy Information Administration.

Analysts expect the additional costs to be borne by some combination of oil producers in Canada and Mexico, U.S. refineries and American consumers. How the tariffs ripple through the market will depend in part on how long they remain in place.

“It’s a calculus that we’re not familiar with because we’ve never dealt with this before,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service.

Mr. Kloza had estimated that a 25 percent tariff on Canadian oil could push up gasoline prices by 15 to 20 cents in the Midwest, and he said on Friday a 10 percent tariff should result in a smaller increase though he did not provide a more precise estimate.

The oil and gas industry backed Mr. Trump during the 2024 election, donating more than $75 million to his campaign, and companies have welcomed his efforts thus far to swing energy policy back toward fossil fuels.

But tariffs are an area where Mr. Trump’s policies and the industry’s interests diverge. Oil and gas trade associations had urged the Trump administration in recent months to exempt fossil fuels from the tariffs.

“We are hopeful a resolution can be quickly reached with our North American neighbors so that crude oil, refined products and petrochemicals are removed from the tariff schedule before consumers feel the impact,” Chet Thompson, chief executive of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, said in a statement on Saturday.

U.S. oil prices ended the week around $73 a barrel, down roughly 7 percent since mid-January, before Mr. Trump took office. Canadian oil, which tends to be denser and more sulfurous, trades at a discount. On Saturday evening, the U.S. oil price was trading at nearly $74 a barrel.

A gallon of regular gasoline cost an average of $3.10 on Saturday, according to AAA, the motor club. Gasoline generally is cheaper in the Midwest.

The United States also buys other energy products from Canada, including natural gas and uranium that is used to make nuclear fuel.

Karen Harbert, chief executive of the American Gas Association, a trade group that represents local natural gas companies, said in a statement on Saturday that the group would work with the Trump administration to “mitigate any potential effects of these tariffs on home heating and business costs.”

Mr. Trump on Saturday cautioned Canada against responding with its own import taxes, saying in an executive order that “the president may increase or expand in scope the duties imposed under this order.”

The tariffs target the United States’ closest neighbors and key trading partners. Mexico became the United States’ largest trading partner last year, exporting a variety of goods, including automobiles and avocados, while Canada is the largest foreign supplier of crude oil to the United States.

Mexican officials have criticized the tariffs, arguing that they will not only harm Mexico’s economy, but will also hurt U.S. companies that have production plants in Mexico, including General Motors and Ford. American consumers are also likely to see higher prices for fruits, vegetables and other products.

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said on Friday that the country was “prepared for any scenario.” She has suggested that Mexico could retaliate with tariffs of its own.

Here is what to know about the tariffs:

Why is Trump imposing tariffs on Mexico?

Mr. Trump placed Mexico and the U.S. southern border at the center of his presidential campaign, railing against record levels of undocumented immigrants entering the United States, as well as the movement of fentanyl into the country. (Border crossings are currently at significantly lower than the record levels in 2023.)

Mr. Trump accused Mexico of allowing a “mass migration invasion” into the United States, claiming that this had brought “crime, and drugs,” crushed wages and overwhelmed school systems.

It is not the first time Mr. Trump has used tariffs as a strategy to achieve policy objectives involving immigration.

During his first term, he threatened to impose taxes on Mexican products to pressure the country’s president at the time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, into cracking down on migration.

As a result, Mexico deployed National Guard officers across the country to take on illegal immigration and agreed to the expansion of a program that allowed migrants seeking asylum in the United States to remain in Mexico while their legal cases proceeded.

What has Mexico done to counter the flow of immigrants over the U.S. border?

Mexico has significantly increased immigration enforcement in recent years, particularly during the Biden administration. It has added hundreds of immigration checkpoints across the country, including along once-deserted sections of the border, conducted inspections on commercial bus routes and drastically increased detentions.

To deter people from reaching border cities like Tijuana, a top migrant entry point near San Diego, Mexican authorities raided hotels and safe houses, increased security at official crossings and installed new border checkpoints where migrants were passing through a gap in a wall.

Mexico also moved migrants away from the border, using chartered flights and buses to drop large numbers of people in southern cities like Villahermosa. The strategy contributed to a plunge in apprehensions of people trying to cross along the southern border at the start of last year.

The government also introduced bureaucratic obstacles for migrants trying to make it to the United States. At one point, it stopped issuing documents that allowed migrants and refugees to stay in Mexico.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, alluded to these actions this past week when she said the Trump administration had seen “a historic level of cooperation from Mexico” on border security.

What has Mexico done to control the trafficking of fentanyl?

Ms. Sheinbaum has taken a far tougher line than her predecessor in cracking down on the criminal groups involved in the fentanyl trade.

Mr. López Obrador prioritized tackling the social and economic root causes of drug crime over enforcement actions. But during Ms. Sheinbaum’s first four months in office, Mexican security forces have conducted major seizures of fentanyl and stepped up operations to locate and destroy clandestine fentanyl laboratories. Security forces have also targeted key members of the Sinaloa cartel, the powerful criminal organization largely responsible for the fentanyl pouring over the southern border.

In December, Mexican security forces seized more than a ton of fentanyl, the equivalent of more than 20 million doses of fentanyl pills, in what Ms. Sheinbaum described as “the largest mass seizure of fentanyl pills ever made.”

Mexico’s security minister, Omar García Harfuch, announced this past week that since Ms. Sheinbaum took office on Oct. 1, more than 10,000 people had been arrested on serious criminal charges, including homicide. Mexican authorities also have seized 90 tons of drugs, including more than 1.3 tons of fentanyl, and destroyed more than 139 laboratories, Mr. Garcia Harfuch said.

Some of the most decisive efforts to curb rampant violence have focused on the state of Sinaloa, where rival factions of the Sinaloa cartel have turned the state into a war zone after Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia, a top leader of the cartel, was lured onto a plane under false pretenses and sent to the United States, where he is under indictment.

Though there is no evidence that these enforcement actions have made a significant dent in the Sinaloa cartel’s production abilities, analysts say that it has sent a clear message about Mexico’s commitment to make good on Mr. Trump’s demands.

“There are thousands of clandestine fentanyl kitchens in Sinaloa alone, and the drug is so immensely profitable the cartel is not just going to hand it over to the authorities,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a Mexican security analyst.

“But the important thing was to show that Mexico is working harder and faster and making good in this promise to produce results,” he added.

Mexico has also recently passed a constitutional reform to prohibit the production, distribution and sale of chemical precursors needed to manufacture fentanyl. It has also increased laws around offenses related to fentanyl.

What has Mexico told Mr. Trump about its efforts?

After Mr. Trump’s victory, Ms. Sheinbaum said he should consider what Mexico has done to curb the flow of fentanyl and illegal immigration.

In a letter to Mr. Trump, Ms. Sheinbaum said a “comprehensive” migration policy to care for migrants arriving in Mexico from different countries and seeking to reach the United States had led to a 75 percent drop in encounters along the United States-Mexico border from December 2023 to November 2024.

Half of the migrants who arrived in the United States entered with a legal appointment to claim asylum since the United States introduced an app that allowed migrants to make those appointments, she added. (The Trump administration has shut down the app-based entry program.)

“For these reasons, migrant caravans no longer arrive at the border,” she said.

Ms. Sheinbaum, in the same letter, reiterated Mexico’s “willingness to prevent the fentanyl epidemic” from continuing to take a toll in the United States, and highlighted enforcement actions that resulted in the seizure of tons of synthetic drugs.

After almost 10 years under Mr. Trudeau, Canadians will need to make crucial decisions about the country’s political leadership, especially about who they think will be best to fight against President Trump’s tariffs. For many voters, the choice of prime minister may come down to personality, rather than substance, because so far the candidates seem to be in broad agreement on the response to tariffs: that Canada needs to hit back, hard.

The two top contenders to lead the Liberal Party and automatically replace Mr. Trudeau as prime minister are going toe to toe with their plans for retaliation.

The first, Chrystia Freeland, the former finance minister and deputy prime minister, wants Canada to hit back dollar for dollar, slapping its own high tariffs on American goods imported into Canada. Ms. Freeland laid out a detailed plan, including a 100 percent tariff on Tesla vehicles that would target the company owned by Elon Musk, now a key Trump adviser. She led Canada’s trade negotiating team with the United States and Mexico during the first Trump administration.

The second Liberal contender, Mark Carney, the former central banker, is also calling for aggressive retaliation. In an interview with the BBC on Friday, he went as far as to say that Canada should demand repayment of the “subsidies” it gave the United States by selling it 80 percent of its entire oil production at a discount.

The Conservative Party, which has long held a double-digit lead on the Liberals in polling, is looking ahead to this year’s federal election. Its leader, Pierre Poilievre, is pushing for a federal election as soon as the Liberals choose their new leader, betting that he will sweep to victory. Mr. Poilievre is seen as an ideological cousin to Mr. Trump, sharing his populist messaging and combative persona. But in an interview last month he, too, endorsed dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs on American goods.

“We’re both going to lose as Americans and Canadians if we get in a trade war,” he told Canada’s CTV News on Jan. 24. “We can buy elsewhere to maximize the impact on Americans and minimize the impact on Canadians.”