The United States is giving Mexico more time to make trade policy changes to avoid an increase in tariffs that had been set to go into effect on Saturday, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said Monday.
“For the time being, there is no situation that would lead to a special tariff being imposed on Nov. 1,” Ms. Sheinbaum said.
In July, Mr. Trump threatened to put 30 percent tariffs on all goods from Mexico, but then gave the country a 90-day reprieve so it could negotiate with the United States. That reprieve was set to expire on Saturday. When the two presidents spoke Saturday, Ms. Sheinbaum said, they agreed to give Mexico more time to address U.S. demands to lower what it called nontariff barriers to trade.
The White House is asking Mexico to remove what it calls 54 barriers to trade that aren’t tariffs, such as disputes about intellectual property. Ms. Sheinbaum said Monday in her daily news conference that she and Mr. Trump agreed to give it “a few more weeks” to finalize that pending issue.
Mr. Trump has already placed a 25 percent tariff on Mexican imports that don’t comply with the U.S.-Canada-Mexico free trade agreement. Since he did so, Mexican companies have made changes so their goods comply with the agreement and avoid the tariffs. Mexican officials have said nearly 90 percent of the country’s exports to the United States now comply and thus are not subject to the levies.
It is unclear if Mr. Trump’s threatened 30 percent tariffs would constitute an increase of five percentage points on the existing tariffs or an entirely new set of levies.
Mexico and the United States are each other’s largest trading partners. Unlike Canada, to which Mr. Trump has taken an increasingly bellicose approach, Mexico has been able to forge a collaborative relationship with the Trump administration, in part because Mexico has made major concessions on security and immigration to appease Mr. Trump.
Jack Nicas is The Times’s Mexico City bureau chief, leading coverage of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Mexico City, covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
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