Trump implements threatened tariffs
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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Saturday, the 1st of February, these are our main stories. The White House says the Trump administration will impose steep new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China from today. The United Nations says fighting between Congolese forces and Rwanda-backed rebels for the city of Goma has killed at least 700 people in less than a week. German MPs have rejected tough immigration measures proposed by the Conservative opposition and backed by the far-right AFD. Also in this podcast, why does scratching an itch feel so good? A new study highlights the benefit of scratching. For decades, trade wars looked to be a thing of the past. The future instead seemed to belong to globalisation, to China and to the big regional trading blocs. No more. From today, Saturday, the United States says it's imposing tariffs on its three biggest trading partners.
Speaking at the White House on Friday, President Trump said he would deliver on his campaign pledge to impose tough tariffs on imports from China, Canada and Mexico.
We have about a $200 billion deficit with Canada, getting close to $200 billion. They've treated us very unfairly. And I say, why should we be subsidizing Canada? It's wonderful. I have so many friends in Canada. It's a great place. We'll see what happens. And with Mexico, it's the same thing. We have a $250 billion deficit.
As we record this podcast, it's still not clear if there'll be any exemptions. But the threat of high tariffs brought this response from the former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who's currently on the campaign trail to take over as leader of the Liberal Party and as Canadian Prime Minister from Justin Trudeau.
I think President Trump probably thinks that we in Canada will cave in, but we are going to stand up to a bully. We're not going to back down. We're united. And we will retaliate. Ultimately, the the steps that the president is taking against Canada, contemplating, I guess, as well against Mexico, China, others and threatening the world are going to rebound negatively on the United States. They're going to hit growth. They're going to move up inflation. They're going to raise interest rates. They're going to damage the US's reputation around the world.
I spoke to our North America business correspondent Ritika Gupta who's in New York just before the tariffs were due to come into effect.
Trump has said that they'll be levelling 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico along a 10% duty on China but I think it's worth noting that there's a lot of uncertainty about how that they will be implemented because many say Trump is using these tariffs as a negotiating tool so there is a chance that he could put the 25 all on those imports from canada and mexico or actually phase in in higher duties on a monthly basis so that's something that we still don't have clarity on and it does take some time to implement so that does give partners a chance to respond president donald trump has said that he would impose tariffs on a wide range of imports in the coming months including steel aluminum, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, the semiconductors. So he's ramped up a lot of these threats on their trading partners. So it could really hit a lot of specific industries and make prices higher for the consumer here in the U.S. And how much would business be affected? Oh, I think that, you know, there could be some big ramifications.
It's a risky gamble, again, because countries could retaliate and it could lead to some sort of a trade war. The U.S. imports a lot of goods from China and Canada and Mexico. Think about the auto industry. Wolf Research says that it could lift the price of a typical car by some $3,000. That could devastate the car industry and disrupt supply chains. Then there's the issue of gasoline prices.
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