Donald Trump suspends plans to impose tariffs on Mexico, but Steven Mnuchin says threat remains

The US and Mexico have reached an agreement to stave off tariffs on Mexican goods, officials confirmed on Friday night.

On Saturday, Donald Trump heralded the deal but complained about its coverage by the US media, while his treasury secretary told reporters the president retained the authority to impose tariffs if Mexico did not live up to the deal.

Trump had threatened to impose five per cent tariffs on all Mexican goods, rising to 25 per cent, if the country did not agree new measures to stem migration from Central America.

The tariffs were set to go in effect on Monday but the president tweeted late on Friday that a deal had been reached and the tariffs were “indefinitely suspended”.

“Thanks to the support of all Mexicans, the imposition of tariffs on Mexican products exported to the USA has been avoided,” the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, tweeted.

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In a Joint Declaration, both countries said Mexico agreed to immediately expand along the entire border a programme that sends migrants seeking asylum in the US back to Mexico while they await adjudication.

The country also agreed to increase enforcement to contain the flow of migrants headed to the US, including by deploying national guard troops to its southern border and cracking down on human smuggling, the declaration said.

On Saturday, Trump celebrated a victory, writing: “Mexico will try very hard, and if they do that, this will be a very successful agreement for both the United States and Mexico!”

But he also complained that “there has … been much false reporting (surprise!) by the Fake and Corrupt News Media, such as Comcast/NBC, CNN, New York Times and Washington Post”.

Trump did not specify which reports had annoyed him, simply adding: “These ‘Fakers’ are Bad News!”

At a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Fukuoka, Japan, the Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said Trump retained the authority to impose tariffs.

“We now have an agreement that we believe is going to fix the immigration issue,” Mnuchin told reporters, adding that he spoke to Trump just before the deal was announced. “And that was extremely important to the president.

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“Our expectation is that Mexico will do what they’ve committed to do and our expectation is that we won’t need to put tariffs in place, but obviously if that’s not the case, the president retains that authority.”

Friday’s agreement did not include a US proposal to return asylum seekers from Guatemala to Mexico, and Honduran and Salvadoran asylum seekers to Guatemala, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said.

“I think it’s a fair balance: they had more drastic measures and proposals at the start and we reached some middle point,” he said, adding that the national guard deployment would start on Monday.

Ebrard highlighted US support in the agreement for a Mexican proposal to jointly address the causes of migration from Central America.

The asylum program is commonly known as Remain in Mexico and operates in the border cities of Tijuana, Mexicali and Ciudad Juarez. Under the new deal, returned asylum seekers will spend long periods in cities such as Reynosa, on the Texas border.

The programme was challenged in court earlier this year by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups, which say it puts asylum seekers in danger and violates US and international law.

A federal judge ruled to halt the policy but an appeal court overturned the decision. Between January and June, 10,393 mostly Central Americans have been sent back to Mexico.