“With Canada, Justin Trudeau is out. So it’s a bargaining tool, and I can see him using tariffs again as leverage,” adds Chan, who is now ambassador-at–large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The word ‘tariff’ has been used by US President Donald Trump to seduce Americans to return him to the Oval Office. But for the country's trading partners, threats of tariffs as high as 60% is a negotiation tactic used by America to extract certain concessions, says veteran Singapore diplomat Chan Heng Chee at a forum organised by UOB.
“He’s been echoing 25% on Mexico, and 25% on Justin Trudeau’s Canada. What did he get? Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum pushed back, but she agreed to control immigration and to a certain extent fentanyl, so he got what he wanted,” says Chan, a long time former ambassador to the US.
