While talking to the press in the Oval Office on Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that 25 percent tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico could be coming as soon as Saturday. The president is also considering the same tariffs on Canadian and Mexican oil.

President Donald Trump said his 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico are coming on Saturday, but he’s still considering whether to include oil from those countries as part of his import taxes.

“We may or may not,” Trump told reporters Thursday in the Oval Office about tariffing oil from Canada and Mexico. “We’re going to make that determination probably tonight.”

Trump said his decision will be based on whether the price of oil charged by the two trading partners is fair, although the basis of his threatened tariffs pertains to stopping illegal immigration and the smuggling of chemicals used for fentanyl.

While the cost of tariffs on Canadian and Mexican products may not have a huge impact on American consumers, a tariff on oil may be a different story, the AP story linked above claims:

The United States imported almost 4.6 million barrels of oil daily from Canada in October and 563,000 barrels from Mexico, according to the Energy Information Administration. U.S. daily production during that month averaged nearly 13.5 million barrels a day.

So, we import a little over a third as much as we produce from Canada and Mexico. That’s a fair amount of imported oil from two sources, and if Pres. Trump were able to get the Keystone Pipeline back in the works, we may well be importing even more Canadian oil.

Pres. Trump has also already set in motion policies that should expand domestic production, but that won’t happen overnight. The president is also proposing the External Revenue Service, to collect tariffs and fees and, as RedState’s own Bob Hoge wrote recently, to hopefully abolish the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and replace the income tax.

Hoge wrote:

On Tuesday, Trump unveiled his latest idea—the External Revenue Service (ERS). The soon-to-be president posted his proposition to Truth Social:

For far too long, we have relied on taxing our Great People using the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Through soft and pathetically weak Trade agreements, the American Economy has delivered growth and prosperity to the World, while taxing ourselves. It is time for that to change.…

— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) January 14, 2025

The president has floated the idea of tariffs and fees replacing the income tax, which would require a constitutional amendment to do away with it; the 16th Amendment was ratified specifically to allow for a federal income tax and would have to be repealed if the income tax were to be done away with for good.

Pres. Trump campaigned in part on the use of tariffs on products to pressure countries like Mexico to, among other things, stem the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants into the United States. On oil, though, let’s hope they think hard on it. We will watch for a decision on that and bring you updates as events warrant.