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Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum hinted at retaliation over US president-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on her nation’s exports on Tuesday as the peso slid against the dollar.
Trump vowed on Monday night to impose tariffs of 25 per cent on all imports from Mexico and Canada on his first day in office, accusing the two countries of failing to do enough to curb illegal migration and drug trafficking.
“President Trump, the phenomenon of migration or the consumption of drugs in the United States will not be dealt with by threats or with tariffs,” Sheinbaum wrote in a letter to the next US president which she read out at her daily press conference.
“One tariff will come in response to another, and so on until we put shared companies at risk,” she said, noting that big US carmakers were among Mexico’s principal exporters to the US.
Sheinbaum added that tariffs on such companies were “not acceptable and would cause inflation and joblessness for the US and Mexico”.
On Tuesday morning, the Mexican peso shed 1.4 per cent against the US dollar, adding to a sharp depreciation this year, while the Canadian dollar fell 0.9 per cent to a four-year low.
The Mexican president said she was planning to send the letter on Tuesday and was proposing a dialogue with Trump’s team.
She added that Trump was “probably not aware” of the work Mexico was doing on migration, saying that interceptions at the border were down by three-quarters from last December and that tonnes of illicit narcotics had been seized.
Trump had said in his post on Monday that “thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before”.
The proposed tariffs marked the opening salvos in Trump’s protectionist trade plan since winning this month’s election. The president-elect also said he would impose additional levies of 10 per cent on Chinese exports, pointing to what he characterised as Beijing’s failure to stop “massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States”.
However, this figure was lower than the 60 per cent he had previously threatened.
China’s onshore renminbi slipped 0.2 per cent to Rmb7.25.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to Trump on Monday night to discuss border security on trade. On Tuesday, Trudeau told reporters: “There’s work to do and we know how to do it.”