Important Takeaways:
- At exactly 12.01am ET this morning, the long-awaited 25% US tariffs on Canada and Mexico as well as an additional 10% levy on China went live. The 25% tariffs taking effect apply to all imports from Canada and Mexico, except for Canadian energy which will be tariffed at a 10% rate.
- The 25% EU tariffs, sectoral tariffs on copper, lumber etc., as well as the broader suite of reciprocal tariffs
- Swift retaliation followed from both Canada and China. Canada imposed 25% tariffs of its own on $155bn of US exports including orange juice and bourbon in two stages – immediate tariffs on $30bn of goods and the remaining $125bn in 21 days.
- China raised tariffs by 10% on soybeans, pork, beef, and fruits starting March 10th, and 15% tariffs on chicken, wheat, corn and cotton in line with yesterday’s press reports of agricultural goods being Chinese tariff targets.
- Additionally, China’s Customs suspended imports of US lumber effective immediately, and suspended soybean import qualification for three US companies
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Important Takeaways:
- China is reacting angrily to President Trump’s pledge to impose an additional 10% tariff on its products, saying fentanyl is “the U.S.’s own problem.”
- Trump said the levy will take effect on Tuesday alongside a 25% tariff on products from Canada and Mexico. The Chinese tariff comes on top of a previously announced 10% tariff on products from the Asian superpower, ratcheting up tensions as the U.S. president says the trio of nations are letting deadly opioids pour into American communities.
- “China deplores and opposes this move, and will take what is necessary to firmly defend its legitimate interests,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said Friday. “The fentanyl issue is just an excuse the U.S. uses to impose tariffs on, pressure and blackmail China, and they punish us for helping them. This will not solve their concerns.”
- Chinese manufacturers make precursor chemicals for fentanyl that reach Mexico, where cartels finish the drug product and send it to U.S. communities. A tiny percentage is seized at the Canadian border but the White House stressed that domestic production is increasing in Canada and even small amounts can kill in large numbers.
- On Friday, Mr. Lin said China agreed to officially restrict fentanyl-related substances at Mr. Trump’s request in 2019. It also struck a deal with President Biden to crack down on the flow of precursor chemicals.
- “China has conducted counter narcotics cooperation with the U.S. side in a broad-based and in-depth way. The remarkable progress is there for all to see,” Mr. Lin said. “Pressuring, coercion and threat is not the right way to deal with China. Instead, mutual respect is the basic prerequisite.”
- Trump said there hasn’t been nearly enough progress and that families are being destroyed by tens of thousands of overdose deaths per year in the U.S.
- Countries like China and Mexico have suggested the U.S. is to blame for its crisis because too many people are addicted to drugs.
- “China is one of the world’s strictest countries on counter narcotics both in terms of policy and its implementation,” Mr. Lin said. “The fentanyl issue is the U.S.’s own problem.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The flight path of a US spy plane shows it conducted a mysterious mission over the Gulf of California in Mexico this week
- The aircraft appeared to stay in international airspace while operating near Mexico. It did not reach the end of the Gulf that is blocked by Mexico’s territorial sea.
- However, the area falls under the influence of the Sinaloa Cartel, a large and notorious drug trafficking organization.
- US-Mexico relations have remained strained due to continued drug smuggling and illegal immigration into the US.
- The flight has sparked speculations from the military collecting communications to US officials sending a message after Trump agreed to a 30-day pause on his tariff threats against Mexico, allowing time for the country to secure its borders.
- An official told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the US was using the RC-135 to conduct ‘ISR flights,’ which gather information to support military operations off the coast of Mexico.
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Important Takeaways:
- China announced retaliatory tariffs on select American imports and an antitrust investigation into Google on Tuesday, just minutes after a sweeping levy on Chinese products imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump took effect.
- American tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico were also set to go into effect Tuesday before Trump agreed to a 30-day pause as the two countries acted to address his concerns about border security and drug trafficking. Trump planned to talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the next few days.
- This isn’t the first round of tit-for-tat actions between the two countries. China and the U.S. engaged in an escalating trade war in 2018 when Trump repeatedly raised tariffs on Chinese goods and China responded each time.
- This time, analysts said, China is much better prepared, announcing a slew of measures that go beyond tariffs and cut across different sectors of the U.S. economy. The government is also more wary of upsetting its own fragile and heavily trade-dependent economy.
- “It’s aiming for finding measures that maximize the impact and also minimize the risk that the Chinese economy may face,” said Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis Corporate and Investment Banking in Hong Kong. “At the same time … China is trying to increase its bargaining chips.”
- John Gong, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, called the response a “measured” one. “I don’t think they want the trade war escalating,” he said. “And they see this example from Canada and Mexico and probably they are hoping for the same thing.”
- China announced export controls on several elements critical to the production of modern high-tech products.
- They include tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum and indium, many of which are designated as critical minerals by the U.S. Geological Survey, meaning they are essential to U.S. economic or national security that have supply chains vulnerable to disruption.
- The export controls are in addition to ones China placed in December on key elements such as gallium.
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Important Takeaways:
- Mexican drug cartels are ordering their members to target U.S. Border Patrol agents with kamikaze drones and other explosives amid a crackdown at the southern border by the Trump administration.
- An internal memo titled “Officer Safety Alert” cited social media posts and other sources for the warning to federal agents, the New York Post reported. Agents were reminded to be “cognizant of their surroundings” and should be wearing their ballistic armor and utilizing their long firearms.
- News Nation, which first reported the memo, reported TikTok posts and other social media sites used by Mexican drug cartels have also advised illegal immigrants to spit and urinate on ICE agents and defecate in their vehicles.
- Other posts have urged assassins to target border personnel.
- Last week, Border Patrol agents received gunfire from cartel members in Mexico while patrolling in Fronton, Texas, the Texas Department of Public Safety said. The cartel members fled Mexico because of a military presence and sought refuge on an island between Mexico and the U.S., DPS said.
- Cartel leaders have realized a proactive U.S. presence on the border could cut into their drug and human smuggling profits, the memo showed, according to the Post.
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Important Takeaways:
- Thousands of ICE officers have been dispatched to the San Diego border crossing as they prepare to take ‘100,000 immigrants’ back to Mexico and Central America in one of the biggest migrant raids in recent times.
- A White House intelligence source said: ‘There is a ‘mile long line of DHS trucks and CBP in front of Camp Pendleton right now, ready to do the biggest illegal immigrant grab in recent history.
- ‘The West Coast is this week and the East Coast is next week. It is about to get crazy in California. They need to fill 100,000 spots’, meaning arrests is the directive.
- The source continued: ‘They are going to be taking 100,000 immigrants back to Mexico, Columbia, El Salvador and Guatemala in this grab.’
- Border czar Tom Homan says he is not satisfied with the pace of migrant deportations – despite ICE’s ‘unprecedented’ number of arrests – and claims the US needs to ‘open the aperture up’ and carry out ‘more deportations’.
- Immigration arrests have reached about 1,000-1,200 per day in recent days, according to ICE, far above the daily average of 311 in fiscal year 2024.
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Important Takeaways:
- NewsNation’s Ali Bradley reported that while the suspected cartel has fired shots from the Mexican side of the territory for years, things in the area have escalated “in unprecedented ways since President [Donald] Trump was elected—Even giving orders to shoot at agents recently.”
- Since taking office last week, Trump has issued a massive crackdown on illegal immigration, signing a slew of executive orders that have paved the way for mass deportations and the return of some of his first-term policies. Among those orders is one that designates Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
- Trump made immigration a central theme of his successful presidential campaign, and Americans largely support his mass deportation plans. A New York Times/Ipsos poll from January 2 to 10 found 55 percent of voters strongly or somewhat supported such plans. Eighty-eight percent supported “Deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have criminal records.” Large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans agreed that the immigration system is broken.
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Important Takeaways:
- Some 175,000 people now actively work for Mexico’s smuggling cartels, according to a shocking new estimate that would make them the country’s fifth-largest private employer.
- The cartels’ secret is their viciously efficient ability to recruit, said Rafael Prieto-Curiel, who led the researchers and who said the cartels are the country’s top recruiter at more than 350 new people each week.
- That helps them counter their massive losses thanks to arrests, killings and dropouts.
- “Cartels, they need to have roughly 175,000 members. They cannot be much smaller because they would have collapsed. They cannot be much bigger because they would have grown so fast,” Mr. Prieto-Curiel said. “So they have to be roughly 175,000 members, which means roughly, just to put it into context, the fifth-largest employer in the country.”
- He and his fellow researchers used computer models to peer into the country’s notoriously secretive cartels, running millions of permutations on the 150 different cartels, evaluating their recruiting and losses to arrests, killings and dropouts.
- He called recruiting the “secret of the success of a cartel.”
- President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to take a heavy hand with the cartels.
- That includes designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and potentially tasking the U.S. military to conduct some counter-cartel operations.
- Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has bristled at those ideas, calling them “interference” in her nation’s affairs.
- The cartels have their hand in drug manufacturing and smuggling, money laundering, sex trafficking, human smuggling and other assorted mayhem. During the Biden border surge, experts said their income from moving people across the border topped even their income from drugs.
- S. officials also blame them for the epidemic of fentanyl deaths, saying the cartels have taken over the production and smuggling business after Chinese syndicates were pushed out of business in the last decade.
- ZME Science said Mr. Prieto-Curiel also calculated that 60,000 cartel members died over the 10 years from 2012 to 2022. Another 60,000 have been “incapacitated.”
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Important Takeaways:
- In its lawsuit, Mexico alleged the manufacturers and distributors were aiding and abetting the purchase of their firearms by dealers known to supply drug cartels.
- They also claim that firearm makers have resisted making changes to their products – such as making gun serial numbers harder to tamper with or installing certain technological safeguards that would hinder a gun’s unauthorized use – that would make the guns less appealing to criminal gangs.
- And the complaint says manufacturers market their products in a “inflammatory” and “reckless” way that makes guns more attractive to cartels.
- The high court on Friday granted the request by Smith & Wesson and other gun manufacturers to review a federal appeals court ruling reviving the case, after a trial judge threw it out on the basis of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a law that generally bars civil liability for firearm manufacturers and distributors for the use of their products by third-party criminals.
- At the heart of the dispute before the Supreme Court is the 2005 federal law passed by a GOP-led Congress. The ruling in Mexico’s favor came after gunmakers had previous success in using the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act to stop similar lawsuits from local and state governments.
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