U.S. lifts steel and aluminum tariffs on Mexico and Canada

The United States has reached a deal with Mexico and Canada to sell products without tariffs, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday.

“We’ve just reached an agreement with Canada and Mexico and we’ll be selling our product into those countries without the imposition of tariffs or major tariffs,” Trump told a gathering of real estate agents in Washington.

Canada will move quickly to ratify the new North American trade pact, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Saturday, a day after the United States agreed to lift tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum as well.

U.S. President Donald Trump had imposed the global “ Section 232 ” tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum in March 2018 on both Canada and Mexico on national security grounds, invoking a 1962 Cold War-era trade law.

The metals tariffs were a major irritant for Canada and Mexico and had caused them to halt progress toward ratification of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) , the trilateral trade deal signed last year which will replace the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

“We were very clear that as long as the 232 tariffs were there it would be very, very hard for us to ratify the new NAFTA, and that is why we did not table the legislation,” Freeland said in an interview broadcast by CBC radio.

“Now that that big obstacle is lifted, full steam ahead,” she said, without saying when the agreement would be presented to parliament, which closes down in June ahead of an October national election.

The Mexican President ’s office said on Friday that a U.S. deal to lift steel and aluminum tariffs will not impose quotas on metals in Mexico.

“We came to an agreement that benefits both parties: the tariffs are lifted, without quotas on steel and aluminum,” it said in a statement, adding that it reinstated a tariff-free commercial relationship for those products.

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