America Once Lifted Up Its Neighbors. Trump Is Shifting to Hurting Them.

• March 6, 2025Updated 11:03 a.m. ET

When the United States signed a free-trade agreement with Canada and Mexico more than 30 years ago, the premise was that partnering with two other thriving economies would also benefit America.

This week, President Trump abruptly scrapped that idea. He imposed a sweeping 25 percent tariff on the roughly $1 trillion of imports that Mexico and Canada send into the United States each year as part of that North American trade pact. Those tariffs are expected to significantly raise costs for Canadian and Mexican exports, undermining their economies and likely tipping them into recession.

Mr. Trump’s decision to unwind decades of economic integration raises big questions about the future of North America and the industries that have been built around the idea of an economically integrated continent. While some factories in Canada and Mexico might move to the United States to avoid tariffs, the levies will also raise costs for American consumers and manufacturers that have come to depend on materials from their North American neighbors.

“This is a day where the United States stopped seeing trade as force for mutual benefit, and began seeing it as a tool of economic warfare,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He added that the levies were “a fundamental attack on the economic well being of our closest neighbors.”