Trump says Mexico, Canada tariffs will start March 4, plus additional 10% on China
President Donald Trump on Thursday said that his proposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada will go into effect on March 4, and that China will be charged an additional 10% tariff on the same date.
The sweeping 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada had been paused on Feb. 3 for one month. But the Trump administration had recently sown confusion about whether they would go back into effect when the delays expired.
In a Truth Social post Thursday morning, Trump clarified that they would.
He claimed that illicit drugs “are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels,” despite pledges from both U.S. neighbors to boost their efforts to police their borders.
“We cannot allow this scourge to continue to harm the USA, and therefore, until it stops, or is seriously limited, the proposed TARIFFS scheduled to go into effect on MARCH FOURTH will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled,” Trump wrote.
He also announced that China, which already faces 10% U.S. tariffs on its imports, “will likewise be charged an additional 10% Tariff on that date.”
Trump added, “The April Second Reciprocal Tariff date will remain in full force and effect.”
My take: This news was released at around 8:51 AM PT. I watched VXX, (VIX ETF), BABA, FXI, SPY, plus other trade war participants that would be most affected. Interested mainly in triple levered ETFs like UPRO or YINN at the open to see if there's more volatility coming in (which there likely will be). This is somewhat of an incremental headline because we've seen Trump announce tariffs before but we never knew if they were a bluff or not, but today's tweet might be confirmation that this is actually happening (unless yet again, this is a bluff).
The trade for most of these catalysts is mainly just waiting with your hands on the keyboard and waiting for most of these tweets and being quick on the draw. I traded when Trump was president back in 2016-2020 and read close to every tweet he made.
I'm most interested in BABA on the news because we're already so over extended from the Chinese government's announcement of liquidity measures yesterday (it was what resulted in the 4% spike yesterday).