����Ӱ��AV

The trade penalties that Trump signed Saturday at his Florida resort caused a mix of panic, anger and uncertainty, and threatened to rupture a decades-old partnership on trade in North America while further straining relations with China.

“Canadians are perplexed,” said the country’s U.S. ambassador, Kirsten Hillman. “We view ourselves as your neighbor, your closest friend, your ally.”

Canada and Mexico ordered retaliatory tariffs on American goods in response to the tariffs, and businesses and consumers in both countries questioned Sunday how the new trade war might affect them.

Canada initially ordered tariffs of 25% on American imports starting Feb. 4, including beverages, cosmetics and paper products worth 30 billion Canadian dollars ($20 billion). A second list of goods was to be released soon, including passenger vehicles, trucks, steel and aluminum products, certain fruits and vegetables, beef, pork, dairy products and more. Those goods were estimated to be worth 125 billion Canadian dollars ($85 billion).

Mexico has so far said only that it will impose retaliatory tariffs, without mentioning any rate or products.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke by phone Saturday after Trump’s administration imposed the new tariffs — 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico, with a lower rate of 10% for Canadian oil, and 10% on imports from China.

Trudeau’s office said in a statement that Canada and Mexico agreed “to enhance the strong bilateral relations” between their countries. Canadian officials have had extensive dialogue with their Mexican counterparts, but a senior Canadian official said he would not go as far as to say the tariff responses were coordinated.

“Now is the time to chose products made right here in Canada,” Trudeau posted Sunday on X. “Check the labels. Let’s do our part. Wherever we can, choose Canada.”

Canada is the largest export market for 36 states, and Mexico is the largest trading partner of the U.S.

By following through on a campaign pledge, Trump may also have simultaneously broken his promise to voters in last year’s election that his administration could quickly reduce inflation. That means the same frustration he is facing from other nations might also spread domestically to consumers and businesses.

“WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!),” Trump said in a social media post. “BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.”

His administration has not said how high that price could be or what improvements would need to be seen in stopping illegal immigration and the smuggling of fentanyl to merit the removal of the tariffs that Trump imposed under the legal justification of an economic emergency. The tariffs are set to launch Tuesday.

“If prices go up, it’s because of other people’s reactions to America’s laws,” his homeland secretary, Kristi Noem, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In a Truth Social post, Trump railed against Canada’s trade surplus with the United States: “We don’t need anything they have. We have unlimited Energy, should make our own Cars, and have more Lumber than we can ever use.”

Despite Trump’s assertion that the U.S does not need Canada, one-quarter of the oil that the America consumes per day is from its ally to the north. He reiterated his false claim that America subsidizes Canada.

Trump contended that without that surplus, “Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country. Harsh but true! Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State. Much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada — AND NO TARIFFS!”

Hillman, the ambassador, has said the U.S. had about a $75 billion Canadian ($51 billion) trade deficit with Canada last year, but noted that one-third of what Canada sells into the U.S. is energy exports and that there is a deficit when oil prices are high. About 60% of U.S. crude oil imports are from Canada.

Canada is the largest export market for 36 states and Mexico is the largest trading partner of the U.S.

Canadians “just don’t understand where this is coming from ... and probably there’s a little bit of hurt, right?” Hillman told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

The Chinese government said it would take steps to defend its economic interests and intends to file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization.

For Trump, the open question is whether inflation could be a political pressure point that would cause him to back down. As a candidate, Trump repeatedly hammered Democrats over the inflation under President Joe Biden that resulted from supply chain issues during the coronavirus pandemic, the Biden administration’s own spending to spur the recovery and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Trump said his previous four years as president had low inflation, so the public should expect the same if he came back to the White House. But he also said specifically that higher inflation would stagger the U.S. as a nation, a position from which he now appears to be retreating with the tariffs.

“Inflation is a disaster,” he said at a Philadelphia campaign rally. “It’s a country-buster. It’s a total country-buster.”

Larry Summers, treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, said the tariffs were “a self-inflicted wound to the American economy.”

“Inflation might go up over the next nine months by as much ... as 1%, just at a moment when we were trying to bring it down,” he told CNN’s “Inside Politics.”

He added that “on the playground or in international relations, bullying is not an enduringly winning strategy. And that’s what this is.” And the ultimate winner, Summers suggested, would be Chinese leader Xi Jinping because “we’ve moved to drive some of our closest allies into his arms” and “we’re legitimating everything he’s doing by violating all the international norms that we set up.”