Trump delays tariffs on Mexican goods under trade agreement until April 2

"I have agreed that Mexico will not be required to pay tariffs on anything that falls under USMCA Agreement,” he said.

Listen to article

US President Donald Trump on Thursday said Mexico would not be required to pay tariffs on any goods that fell under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade until April 2, but made no mention of a reprieve for Canada despite his commerce secretary saying a comparable exemption was likely.

“After speaking with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, I have agreed that Mexico will not be required to pay tariffs on anything that falls under the USMCA Agreement,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This agreement is until April 2nd.”

Mexican President Sheinbaum thanked her American counterpart for an “excellent and respectful” call on Thursday, promising that her government would work on security and migration as Washington temporarily eased tariffs.

“Most of what Mexico imports to the US is compliant with the trade deal,” she said at a press conference after the announcement.

Sheinbaum said both countries would continue working together to stem the arrival of the opioid fentanyl from Mexico into the United States.

“We had an excellent and respectful call in which we agreed that our work and collaboration have yielded unprecedented results, within the framework of respect for our sovereignties,” Sheinbaum said in a post on X.

Sheinbaum added that the two countries would also work to curb the arrival of guns from the US in Mexico.

Earlier today, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the one-month reprieve on hefty tariffs on goods imported from Mexico and Canada that was granted to automotive products was likely to be extended to all products that comply with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade.

Lutnick told CNBC he expected Trump to announce that extension today, a day after exempting automotive goods from the 25 per cent tariffs he slapped on imports from Canada and Mexico earlier in the week.

Trump “is going to decide this today”, Lutnick said, adding, “it’s likely that it will cover all USMCA-compliant goods and services.

“So if you think about it this way, if you lived under Donald Trump’s US-Mexico-Canada agreement, you will get a reprieve from these tariffs now. If you chose to go outside of that, you did so at your own risk, and today is when that reckoning comes,” he said.

Nonetheless, Trump’s social media post made no mention of a reprieve for Canada, the other party to the USMCA deal that Trump negotiated during his first term as president.

Lutnick said his “off the cuff” estimate was that more than 50pc of the goods imported from the two US neighbours — also its two largest trading partners — were compliant with the USMCA deal that Trump negotiated during his first term as president.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Lutnick’s comments “promising” in remarks to reporters in Canada.

“That aligns with some of the conversations that we have been having with administration officials, but I’m going to wait for an official agreement to talk about Canadian response and look at the details of it,” Trudeau said.

“But it is a promising sign. But I will highlight that it means that the tariffs remain in place, and therefore, our response will remain in place.”

Lutnick emphasised that the reprieve would only last until April 2, when he said the administration plans to move ahead with reciprocal tariffs under which the US would impose levies that match those imposed by trading partners.

In the meantime, he said, the current hiatus was about getting fentanyl deaths down, which was the initial justification Trump used for the tariffs on Mexico and Canada and levies on Chinese goods that have now risen to 20pc.

“On April 2, we’re going to move with the reciprocal tariffs, and hopefully Mexico and Canada will have done a good enough job on fentanyl that this part of the conversation will be off the table, and we’ll move just to the reciprocal tariff conversation,” Lutnick said. “But if they haven’t, this will stay on.”

Indeed, Trudeau expects the US and Canada to remain in a trade war.

“I can confirm that we will continue to be in a trade war that was launched by the United States for the foreseeable future,” he told reporters in Ottawa.