The United States could impose steep tariffs on both Canada and Mexico by Feb. 1, President Donald Trump said Monday night, bringing a swift end to the sense of relief felt when he did not directly mention the specific trade threat during his inaugural address.

“We’re thinking in terms of 25 per cent [tariffs] on Mexico and Canada,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday night, repeating his accusation that both countries allow too many migrants and fentanyl to cross their borders into the U.S. Asked when he would enact them, Trump said, “I think Feb. 1. I think—I think we’ll do it Feb. 1.”

The date and details of the tariffs Trump mentioned were not in the memo on the “America First Trade Policy” the White House posted on its website Monday night, though the document did stress how the first Trump administration viewed trade policy through the lens of national security. 

The memo directs federal agencies to review individual trade policies, including for trade deficits, and directs the U.S. trade representative to prepare for next year’s review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement. It also asked agencies to recommend “appropriate trade and national security measures” to stem illegal migration and the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., mentioning Canada, Mexico and China by name. Any deadlines mentioned are in April.

It is not as if Trump avoided the tariffs issue entirely in his inaugural speech after he was sworn in as the 47th U.S. president. He pledged to “immediately begin the overhaul of [the U.S.] trade system” and create an external revenue service to collect tariffs and duties.

“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens,” Trump said.

Though some business leaders voiced relief earlier in the day at the absence of immediate tariffs, they seemed to sense the respite was temporary. “The game is still very much on and this is not by any sense of the imagination the final whistle,” Goldy Hyder, president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada, said from Washington, D.C.

Later, after Trump put a number and a date to the tariffs, Hyder said: “Of course. Here we are. It’s not even been 12 hours.”

Hyder noted reports in recent days suggesting some people advising Trump favoured a gradual approach to bringing in tariffs, while others were pushing him to make good on what had been a repeated threat. Hyder said Monday night that people he had been speaking to in Washington warned against getting too comfortable.

“They’ve all told me, ‘You should read the speech, because that’s what he’s going to do. Don’t kid yourself.’”

Still, he said, there are a lot of questions about what Trump’s seemingly offhanded remarks mean, such as whether there will be any exemptions. “We don’t know,” he said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had assembled his ministers for a cabinet retreat in Montebello, Que., where ministers initially greeted Trump’s plans to study the trade relationship between the two countries as a good omen. They were huddled in a meeting room in the Fairmont resort there when the news of Trump’s latest remarks broke at about 8 p.m. EST.

The prime minister’s staff abandoned their drinks at the hotel bar and disappeared behind closed doors as David Morrison, the deputy minister of foreign affairs, was quietly ushered into the cabinet room. 

Minutes later, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly and Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc emerged for an impromptu press conference, while hotel guests watched from the balcony.

“None of this should be surprising,” said LeBlanc, who is leading the federal response to Trump’s proposals. “The one thing we’ve learned is that President Trump, at moments, can be unpredictable.”

It was the second time Monday that the cabinet learned about Trump’s plans from media reports. Joly said Canadian officials found out about plans for the trade policy review that morning when they read the The Wall Street Journal—short notice that she blamed on the vagaries of the presidential transition period.

“It is important for people to understand that a lot of the key secretaries of the Trump administration have not been confirmed yet,” she said. 

The federal Liberal government had said it would be ready to retaliate, including with counter tariffs, as soon as that happened, even if it was the day of the inauguration.

Federal ministers have spent weeks consulting with business leaders, unions and provincial governments, gaming out responses to the various possible scenarios, LeBlanc said at the evening press conference. “Our country is absolutely ready to respond to any one of these scenarios,” he said. 

Tariffs were not the only things that could affect key sectors in Canada. Trump also said on Monday he would declare an “energy emergency,” while a post on the White House website said the administration will “use all necessary resources to build critical infrastructure” to boost oil and natural gas production.

Trump had campaigned on a message of greater U.S. energy independence, and often blamed high energy prices for driving inflation. The U.S. imported an average of 6.5 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2023, compared to the 12.9 million a day it produced itself. Canada exports about 80 per cent of its crude oil production, with nearly all of it going to the U.S. 

Among other moves, the president will streamline permitting and review regulations “that impose undue burdens on energy production and use,” the post said.  

In his address, Trump vowed to increase U.S. energy exports and replenish the country’s strategic reserves, declaring, “We will drill, baby, drill.” 

Trump’s energy and trade policy overhaul will also extend to the auto industry. In one of the orders he issued Monday night, Trump directed the Commerce Department to investigate whether more restrictions are needed on vehicle technologies. His energy plan, meanwhile, aims to increase the country’s capacity to process non-fuel minerals, like rare earths. Yet it also orders the end of policies that “favor EVs over other technologies.” One goal of the energy plan, the document said, is to improve vehicle affordability.

Leaders on both sides of the border have warned that fulfilling both of Trump’s promises—growing the U.S. auto industry while taxing Canadian imports—may be difficult, given how many American auto jobs rely on Canadian companies. Ontario, for example, imported nearly as many transportation-related goods as it exported in 2023, according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

If Trump does decide to apply tariffs to Canadian auto parts, “it will be challenging to see how the U.S. can expand vehicle production without inflated costs,” said David Adams, CEO of Global Automakers of Canada, which counts companies like Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen as members.

Earlier in the day, when it appeared Trump was planning to do nothing swiftly on tariffs, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith welcomed the “implied acknowledgement that this is a complex and delicate issue” and the preservation of jobs on both sides of the border.

But the threat of tariffs remained, she noted in a lengthy statement. The two countries should address the U.S.’s trade deficit with Canada by buying more from each other, including Canadian purchases of gas turbines, military equipment and computers for data centres, Smith argued.

At the same time, she said, the U.S. should buy more Canadian timber, agricultural products and oil—the last of which accounts for much of the trade imbalance Trump says is a ripoff of America.

Canada should also hurry to increase defence spending, better secure its borders and repeal all federal “anti-energy polices,” Smith wrote.

With files from Anita Balakrishnan in Toronto, David Reevely in Ottawa and Jesse Snyder in Calgary

This story was updated with Trump’s suggestion the tariffs would start Feb. 1, and with reaction to those remarks