Trump says he is considering 10% tariff on China starting February 1

A giant electronic board shows CCTV broadcasting news of U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration outside a mall in Beijing, on January 21, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday (January 21, 2025) said his team is discussing imposing a 10% tariff on China starting February 1 based on the fact that the latter is sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada.

“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 told reporters 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.

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

“For Mexico and China, we’re talking about approximately 25% [tariff],” the [resident said. Responding to another query, Trump said he did not “talk too much about tariffs” when he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week.

When asked if he has asked Xi Jinping 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. I had that talk with President Xi the other day too. I said we don’t want that crap in our country. We’ve got to stop it. I would have stopped it. I had to deal with him where he was going to give the maximum penalty, which in China is death penalty, for drug dealing and he was all set,” Trump said.

“He was going to give the maximum penalty to fentanyl dealers if they send [the staff] to the United States. And of course, Biden didn’t pick that up. I had that deal all done. It was all wrapped up,” he added.

“We were going to get 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 [election] was rigged and we had an incompetent president elected who never followed up on that deal,” Trump said.

He added that if there was death penalty, “they wouldn’t be sending fentanyl to Mexico, Canada and other places”.