The Trump administration may be considering some tariff relief for Canada and Mexico, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Tuesday, disclosing that an announcement on the matter may be released tomorrow amid a jolted stock market.
“Both the Mexicans and the Canadians were on the phone with me all day today trying to show that they’ll do better, and the president’s listening, because you know he’s very, very fair and very reasonable,” Lutnick said in an interview on Fox Business with Larry Kudlow.
“So I think he’s going to work something out with them — it’s not going to be a pause, none of that pause stuff, but I think he’s going to figure out: you do more and I’ll meet you in the middle some way and we’re going to probably [be] announcing that tomorrow,” he continued.
While Lutnick did not explicitly detail what President Donald Trump was thinking, he suggested that tariff discussions will meet “somewhere in the middle” with the president considering Mexico and Canada’s qualms “but not all the way.”
The commerce secretary added that the president is looking to the US-Mexico-Canada trade pact negotiated during his first term noting, “If you live under those rules, then the president is considering giving you relief.”
“If you haven’t lived under those rules, well, then you have to pay the tariff,” Lutnick continued.
Trump announced Monday that his long-threatened 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico would go into effect Tuesday. The stock market suffered a distinctive blow following the announcement, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging by over 1,000 points in 48 hours, according to CNBC.
