NEW YORK — United States President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that the US would not only impose his originally outlined 10% tariffs on all Chinese imports beginning on Tuesday, but that these were now being doubled for an effective rate of 20%.
The move, targeting billions of US dollars in bilateral trade, represented a significant raising of the stakes in the economic showdown with China and arrived in characteristic fashion for the mercurial president: by way of a social media posting, justified on the basis of China's role in the fentanyl drug trade.
"A large percentage of these Drugs, much of them in the form of Fentanyl, are made in, and supplied by, China," Trump declared on his Truth Social account.
"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.
"China will likewise be charged an additional 10% Tariff on that date," he added.
His declaration also involved tariffs of 25% on all imports from Mexico and Canada, which he said were not doing enough to stop trafficking across their borders with the US. Those tariffs are also to go into effect on Tuesday.
The president added that Washington would levy reciprocal tariffs on all nations the US trades with, effective April 2.
The informal and, at times, contradictory messaging has spurred widespread confusion among US and global companies and leaders who have deeply rooted and long-standing supply chains with the United States.
Trump in his posting justified the move on the basis of what he has termed a crisis.
"Drugs are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels," he wrote. "We cannot allow this scourge to continue to harm the USA."
"Thank you for your attention to this matter. GOD BLESS AMERICA!"
US President Donald Trump attends a press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (not pictured) at the White House in Washington, DC, the United States, on Thursday. (Photo: Reuters)
On Wednesday after his first cabinet meeting, Trump said that the tariffs due to go into effect March 4 for Mexican and Canadian imports might be delayed if the two US neighbours, its largest trading partners, could prove they are doing an "excellent job" fighting fentanyl imports and refugees.
And the two are still subject to the April 2 reciprocal tariff deadline that applies to all countries, Trump added.
Trump has signed a blizzard of executive orders involving everything from Jan 6 pardons to renaming the Gulf of Mexico to banning paper straws in his five-week tenure.
But those orders that have threatened to impose massive import taxes on Canadian, Mexican and Chinese goods have been the among most globally consequential.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Many of Trump's stated reasons for his hugely disruptive trade announcements rest on questionable grounds even as they risk sparking a global trade war.
Despite Trump's claim that "more than 100,000 people died last year due to the distribution of these dangerous and highly addictive POISONS", in fact some 55,126 died in the US during the 12-month period ending September 2024, the latest data available, down from an estimated 79,432 in the prior year, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
And while the Trump administration has claimed that Canada has a "growing footprint" in narcotics distribution, drug policy experts say it has a minimal role in fentanyl smuggling into the US - accounting for less than 1% of US fentanyl street supply, according to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The amount of fentanyl seized by the US on the Mexican border, meanwhile, plunged last year by roughly 20% and the potency of fentanyl pills also declined sharply, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
China's record is more mixed, and cooperation has tended to mirror the state of US-China relations.
Last year, after a summit between President Xi Jinping and then-US president Joe Biden in late 2023, Beijing promised new, more stringent regulations to fight seven so-called "precursor" chemicals used to make street fentanyl as well as crackdowns on pill-making machine exports and money laundering.
But this followed a lengthy period when Beijing had suspended all drug-related cooperation. And many of the Chinese measures ultimately depend on implementation, which is easy to ratchet up or down and difficult to measure.
