President Donald Trump insisted Monday his call for tariffs against Mexico was a "very powerful tool" in addition to other tools used to push the country into taking action on immigration and his comments were not "a threat."
"I thought we would be receiving billions of dollars, frankly, and you know what happens with tariffs," Trump told CNBC's "Squawk Box," after calling in to respond to comments by U.S. Chamber Commerce Executive Vice President and head of international affairs Myron Brilliant against the use of tariffs. "Companies will move out of Mexico and they'll move out of China, and they'll come into the United States or go to other countries also, but in the case of Mexico, I'd say we'd get virtually 100% of the companies."
The United States has been losing a "tremendous amount" of money every year with Mexico and has for years, Trump said.
Trump also took issue with The New York Times for a report Mexico already had agreed to actions about the border for several months before he said he would enact taxes on imports if something was not done.
"It's nonsense," Trump said. "We talked about it for months and months and months, and they wouldn't get there, and we just said, 'hey, look, if you don't get there, we're just going to have to charge you hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes.'"
He also rejected the argument tariffs would result in a tax on Americans.
"It depends on what country you're talking about," Trump said. "If you're talking about China, it's different than Mexico, because China will subsidize their product because they want to keep people working."
But with Mexico, "all the companies would immediately move into the United States. You'd have car plants going up all over our country, and there would be no tariff from my standpoint," Trump said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.