NANTUCKET, Massachusetts: US President Joe Biden on Thursday (Nov 28) 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,” he told reporters in Nantucket.
“We have a unusual situation in America – we’re surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and two allies: Mexico and Canada. 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 until they clamped down on drugs and migrants crossing the border, in a move that would appear to violate the US-Mexico-Canada free trade deal.
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 US 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.
