Trump considering 10 pc tariff on China starting Feb 1

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has said he is considering to impose a 10 per cent tariff on Chinese imports starting February 1 to curb the flow of deadly drug fentanyl that Beijing sends to Mexico and Canada.

Fentanyl is a highly addictive synthetic opioid, which, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), presents the deadliest drug threat in the country. The DEA also says that the global fentanyl supply chain "often starts with chemical companies based in China".

"We're talking about a tariff of 10 per cent on China based on the fact that they're sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada," Trump said on Saturday at a joint news conference at the White House along with Oracle CTO Larry Ellison, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, and Open AI CEO Sam Altman.

In response to a question, Trump said he is looking at February 1 as the date for imposing the tariffs.

According to The New York Times newspaper, these would come on top of the tariffs that Trump imposed on more than USD 300 billion worth of Chinese imports during his first term. These were kept in place by former president Joe Biden, who also imposed additional tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, solar cells, semiconductors and advanced batteries.

"For Mexico and China, we’re talking about approximately 25 per cent (tariffs),” Trump said. He presumably meant to say Mexico and Canada here as he had previously threatened to impose tariffs on the two countries for allowing undocumented migrants and drugs, including fentanyl, to come into the US.

Responding to another query, Trump said he did not "talk too much about tariffs" when he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week.

“I had that talk with President Xi the other day too, of China. I said we don't want that crap in our country. We've got to stop it. I would have stopped it," he said.

"I had to deal with him where he was going to give the maximum penalty, which in China is the death penalty, for drug dealing, and he was all set,” Trump said, in an apparent reference to his first term.

“He was going to give the maximum penalty to fentanyl dealers if they send to the United States, they were going to get the death penalty. And of course, Biden didn't pick that up. I had that deal all done. It was all wrapped up,” he said.

“We were going to have it done, and then the election went -- let's put it nicely. It didn't go the proper way. I'm trying to be nice about it. It was rigged and we had an incompetent president elected and he never followed up on that deal," he said.

He added that if there were a death penalty, "they wouldn't be sending fentanyl to Mexico, Canada and other places".

When asked if he has asked Xi to intervene to stop the war in Ukraine, Trump said China has not done very much on that. “He’s got a lot of power. I said you ought to get it settled,” he said.