Trump's tariffs would 'screw up' key relationships with Canada, Mexico: Biden
CBC
U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday said he hoped president-elect Donald Trump would rethink his plan to impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada, saying it could "screw up" relationships with close allies.
"I hope he rethinks it. I think it's a counterproductive thing to do," Biden told reporters in Nantucket, Mass., where he is spending the Thanksgiving Day holiday with his family.
"We have a unusual situation in America — we're surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and two allies: Mexico and Canada. And the last thing we need to do is begin to screw up those relationships."
Trump on Monday said he would impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico once he takes office in January until they clamped down on drugs and migrants crossing the border, in a move that would appear to violate the Canada-U.S.-Mexico free-trade deal.
Such tariffs would throttle the Canadian economy.
In a phone call after Trump's post, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau listed things Canada has already done to improve the situation at the border and suggested Canada's situation wasn't as dire as Mexico's.
Trudeau said his conversation with the president-elect was a "good call" during which he laid out the "facts."
Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Thursday she did not specifically discuss tariffs in a call she held with Trump on Wednesday, adding the two had agreed there would be good relations between the two nations.
Following the call, Trump said Sheinbaum had "agreed to stop migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border."
Sheinbaum, however, said she had laid out a strategy that "attended to" migrants before they reached the U.S. border.
Biden, who met with Trump at the White House earlier this month, reiterated that he wanted the transition between his outgoing administration and the president-elect's incoming one to go smoothly.
"And all the talk about what he's going to do or not do, I think there may be a little bit of internal reckoning on his …part," Biden said.
Trump has threatened new tariffs on China as well.
Biden noted that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping had established a hotline between the two leaders and a direct line of communication between their two militaries.
