The President of the United States, Donald Trumpsaid on Monday (20) that he still intends to move forward with a 25% general tariff about products Mexicans and Canadians.
Tariffs, if enacted, could harm the wallets of US residentsespecially considering that Mexico and Canada are two of the US’s top three trading partners. Collectively, they accounted for 30% of the value of all goods the US imported in 2024.
Although Trump claims that foreign exporters pay the tariffs, consumers must also foot a portion of the bill, as retailers are unlikely to fully absorb the additional costs.
Retailers have taken some preventive measures to avoid rising prices, including stockpiling products and moving production away from countries that could be hit by tariffs.
But these measures can only protect consumers for a while. Furthermore, many products cannot be stored or produced elsewhere.
What will become more expensive in the USA after tariffs on neighbors?
Cars and car parts
Americans imported $87 billion worth of motor vehicles and $64 billion worth of auto parts from Mexico last year, not counting December, the top two goods imported from there that year, according to US Commerce Department data. USA.
Motor vehicles were also the second-largest good imported by the U.S. from Canada last year through November, totaling $34 billion.
The auto industry is likely “apoplectic” about the potential new tariffs, said Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
U.S. auto companies have managed to keep production costs low by hiring lower-wage workers, particularly in Mexico, where much of their production has moved in recent years.
But those cost savings will essentially be erased if there is a 25% tariff, she said. Car manufacturers are unlikely to move their production elsewhere, given that they have made considerable investments in existing plants in both countries and it is difficult to obtain all the raw materials to build cars and their parts from elsewhere.
Gasoline
The U.S. imported $97 billion worth of oil and gas from Canada last year, the largest export in that relationship. The U.S. has become more dependent on Canadian oil since the expansion of Canada’s Trans Mountain pipeline, according to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
This helped bring more oil to be refined across much of the West Coast, as well as the Midwest.
When Trump initially floated tariffs 25% in November, Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, estimated that this would increase the cost of gas for Americans by between 25 cents and 75 cents per gallon. .
This would most directly impact Americans located around the Great Lakes, Midwest and Rocky Mountains, he predicted.
Food and alcoholic beverages
Last year, the U.S. imported $46 billion worth of agricultural products from Mexico, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This includes $8.3 billion in fresh vegetables, $5.9 billion in beer and $5 billion in spirits.
Constellation Brands, which imports Modelo and Corona beers as well as Casa Noble tequila from Mexico, could see its costs rise 16% under Trump’s proposed tariff and will likely have to raise prices by about 4.5%, it said. Wells Fargo equity analyst Chris Carey said in a November note.
But Mexico’s biggest category of agricultural imports last year was fresh fruit, of which the U.S. imported $9 billion, with avocados accounting for $3.1 billion of that total.
Now, all of these products will cost consumers more, especially as supermarkets and farmers tend to operate on very low profit margins compared to other sectors, giving them little leeway to absorb the higher costs of tariffs and, in turn, instead pass them on to consumers, Lovely said.
With information from Alicia Wallace, from CNN Internacional
