WASHINGTON -- In a surprise announcement that threatens to compromise a major trade deal, President Donald Trump said Thursday that he is slapping a 5% tariff on all Mexican imports to pressure the country to do more to crack down on the surge of Central Americans trying to cross the border.
He said the percentage will gradually increase "until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied."
Trump made the announcement by tweet after telling reporters earlier Thursday that he was planning "a major statement" that would be his "biggest" so far on the border.
"On June 10th, the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP. The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied," he wrote, "at which time the Tariffs will be removed."
Trump has accused the Mexican government of failing to do enough to crack down on the surge of Central American migrants who have been flowing to the U.S. in search of asylum from countries including El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
The announcement comes as the administration has been pushing for passage of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that would update the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Jesus Seade, the trade negotiator for Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrader, called the matter "most serious" but also downplayed it as an unlikely possibility.
"It is no secret to anyone that Trump is very active in his use of Twitter, and he launches many tweets that are later changed, he talks about something else and things stay there," he said.
U.S. companies imported $371.9 billion in goods and services from Mexico last year. The top imports from Mexico included vehicles, electrical machinery, machinery, mineral fuels, and optical and medical instruments, according to the office of the U.S. trade representative. The United States also imports a large amount of agricultural products from Mexico, including fruits and vegetables.
The White House said Trump would be using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which gives him broad power to impose import penalties during a national emergency. Trump declared such an emergency earlier this year in a bid to free up money for construction of his long-promised border wall, but the designation also could make it easier for him to restrict trade.
"If the illegal migration crisis is alleviated through effective actions taken by Mexico, to be determined in our sole discretion and judgment, the Tariffs will be removed," the White House said in a statement.
But if Trump is not satisfied, the 5% figure will increase to 10% on July 1, to 15% on Aug. 1, to 20% on Sept. 1 and to 25% on Oct. 1.
"Tariffs will permanently remain at the 25 percent level unless and until Mexico substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory," the statement read.
In a briefing call with reporters Thursday evening, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said there were several things Mexico could do to prevent the tariffs from kicking in.
He said the White House had specifically refrained from setting specific benchmarks but would be looking at progress "on a day-to-day and a week-to-week basis."
"We're going to judge success here by the number of people crossing the border and that number needs to start coming down immediately, in a significant and substantial number," he said.
He also insisted that tariffs were "completely separate and apart from the [new trade agreement]" because one pertained to trade and the other immigration.
"The two are absolutely not linked," he said.
CROSSINGS AT BORDER
Trump's announcement came after the Border Patrol said 1,036 Central Americans crossed into the El Paso, Texas, area to surrender to U.S. authorities, the largest group that U.S. border agents have taken into custody in a single event. Trump tweeted a video of the apprehension late Thursday, declaring that "Democrats need to stand by our incredible Border Patrol and finally fix the loopholes at our Border!"
The group included 934 people in families, 63 unaccompanied children and 39 single adults, authorities said. The majority were from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Migrant families who claim asylum are typically released in the United States with notices to appear in immigration court.
The U.S. has increasingly been forcing migrants to wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. immigration court, shuttling them back and forth from the border for hearings. The policy has been introduced in El Paso and throughout California.
Deportations by Mexican authorities have increased threefold compared with the same period last year, according to the latest statistics, but the vast majority of Central American migrants appear to be successful at evading arrest en route to the U.S. border.
Along the Mexico border, U.S. agents have detained more than 100,000 people for each of the past two months, and the numbers in May are expected to be the highest yet.
Homeland Security officials say Mexican authorities aren't doing enough to reduce the large volume of Central Americans heading north.
Mexican officials have said they're doing everything they can to regulate the migration surge, and they provide police escorts in some cases to prevent criminal organizations from kidnapping and extorting families traveling with small children.
PENCE AND PELOSI
On Thursday, one senior White House official had said there is broad support across the administration to push Mexico further by using tariffs to force action. Other aides, however, had attempted to talk Trump out of the idea, arguing that the threat would scare global markets and undermine passage of the new trade agreement, which was just sent Thursday to Congress by the White House. The trade deal aims to curb the type of tariffs Trump is now threatening to impose if Mexico does not stop the migrants.
Before Trump's announcement, Vice President Mike Pence was on a trip to Canada, where he vowed the new trade deal would be passed this year.
"Our administration is working earnestly with leaders in the Congress of the United States to approve the USMCA this summer," he said.
The Trump administration had formally notified Congress that it's moving forward with its plan to get the new North American trade agreement approved, a move that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called "not a positive step" as her party weighs whether to support the deal.
White House officials submitted a so-called Statement of Administrative Action, a step toward introducing legislation that would bring the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement into force. The move starts a minimum 30-day period for consultations between the White House and Congress to finalize the bill before a vote can take place.
"A new trade agreement without enforcement is not progress for the American worker, just a press release for the president," Pelosi said Thursday.
Asked at a news conference later whether acrimony between Trump and Pelosi could get in the way of ratification in Washington, Pence said that "The president and I are absolutely determined to work with rank and file in Congress and the leadership to move the [agreement] forward."
The U.S., Canada and Mexico signed the new trade deal in November after a year of private negotiations to hammer out the pact. The Trump administration notified Congress at the end of January that it would need to modify several U.S. laws to make good on proposed changes in automobile-manufacturing rules and other issues in the agreement.
The notice presented by the White House to Congress outlines U.S. legal obligations that are required by the pact.
House Democrats have raised a number of areas where they would like to see changes, including to provisions governing labor, the environment and pharmaceuticals. In a step viewed as positive, Pelosi this month created working groups to negotiate with the administration and the removal of U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada. Mexico this month also cleared a hurdle for lawmakers of both parties.
"We all agree that we must replace NAFTA, but without real enforcement mechanisms, we would be locking American workers into another bad deal," Pelosi said.
The new trade deal aims to encourage more automotive and other manufacturing in North America by making it harder to avoid import penalties on products made in China and elsewhere. The rules would require higher wages for many workers, open up Canadian dairy markets for U.S. farmers, and strengthen intellectual-property protection rules. It also would help a range of other industries, including pharmaceutical companies.
Pence was in the Canadian capital hoping to build momentum for the deal. Canadian and Mexican lawmakers also have to approve the deal.
Information for this article was contributed by John Harney, Margaret Collins, Jenny Leonard, Erik Wasson, Nacha Cattan and Justin Blum of Bloomberg News; by Jill Colvin, Colleen Long, Rob Gillies, Kevin Freking, Paul Wiseman and Peter Orsi of The Associated Press; and by Damian Paletta, Erica Werner, Josh Dawsey and Nick Miroff of The Washington Post.
A Section on 05/31/2019