Mexico raises tariffs on imports from Asia
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Mexico raises tariffs on imports from Asia. Live from the UK, this is the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service. I'm William Lee Adams. Good morning. Mexico's parliament has voted in favor of the bill that imposes tariffs of between 5 and 50 percent on more than 1,400 products from Asian nations, including China, that don't have a trade deal with Mexico. The new levies will take effect starting next year. The BBC's Nick Marsh has the details. Nick, hi. Hi, William. So Nick, how far reaching are these tariffs? Well, it's quite significant.
What tariffs has Mexico imposed on imports from Asia?
Mexico has effectively decided to impose import taxes on hundreds of goods from any Asian country it doesn't have a free trade agreement with. So that includes South Korea, Thailand, India, but by far the biggest and the most important is the one you mentioned, China. So starting in January, steel, aluminium, textiles, car parts, you name it, they'll be taxed between 5% and 50%, depending on the item. And when it comes to China, we're talking about $130 billion worth of goods every year. So it is a very significant chunk of what comes into Mexico now subject to import taxes. Has Mexico's government explained what's behind the introduction of the tariffs? If you ask Claudia Scheinbaum, Mexico's president, it is to protect Mexican jobs, Mexican manufacturers in the face of a deluge of cheap Chinese goods that they're not able to compete with.
It's the reason that anyone really puts tariffs in. If you ask China, it's because she is under enormous pressure from Donald Trump. to do it so for two reasons firstly because her country mexico itself is bearing the brunt of u.s tariffs and she's desperate to get them removed so by tariffing chinese goods she's showing donald trump they're on the same page and she can go into any talks showing that the u.s is the preferred trading partner of mexico essentially not any asian country Secondly, there is a feeling in the US, which has been growing, that Mexico has become a bit of a backdoor for Chinese goods to get into America and therefore avoid Trump's tariff. So if you're a Chinese car parts factory and you send your goods to Mexico tariff-free, then you can sell them on to the US.
Now, the White House has clamped down on that to a certain extent, but there's been this desire in the United States to try and align the whole of the American continent. against Beijing and Beijing's economic might. Now, China is not happy about this, as you can imagine. It said Mexico is under coercion to do this. Nick, thanks for joining us on Marketplace.
What is the significance of Mexico's new tariffs on trade?
My pleasure. Okay, let's do the numbers. copper climbed as much as 1.5% to $11,600 a metric ton, close to its record high after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates to a three-year low. Elsewhere, the Indian rupee fell 0.6% to $90.49 per dollar. That's a record low. The rupee has fallen more than 5% this year. Survivors of a deadly typhoon in the Philippines have filed a legal claim in Britain against the oil and gas giant Shell. They're seeking compensation, saying the company's release of huge amounts of greenhouse gases made the storm more severe. Typhoon Rai struck the Philippines just before Christmas in 2021, killing more than 400 people and displacing tens of thousands. Shell has denied the legal claim as baseless.
Drones have become a key weapon on the modern battlefield, especially in the war between Russia and Ukraine. And making drones and developing the technology to thwart them has become a lucrative business, as the BBC's Gideon Long reports. In a clearing in a forest in Ukraine, a soldier sends a drone high into the air. It's a small device, maybe 30 centimetres across, with rotor blades on each corner. A standard commercial drone. The kind of thing you might use to take aerial footage at your wedding or birthday party. But strap a bomb to it and it becomes a deadly weapon. The Russians and Ukrainians have used them to devastating effect. Before Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, there were just a handful of companies in Ukraine making drones.
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