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By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would soon decide whether to exclude Canadian and Mexican oil imports from the 25% tariffs that he has vowed to impose on Saturday on the countries' products.
"We may or may not. We're going to make that determination probably tonight," Trump said about whether he would impose tariffs on Canadian and Mexican oil. He added that this would partly depend on prices and on whether the two countries "treat us properly."
Trump has set a Saturday deadline to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada to push the two largest U.S. trading partners to take action to halt illegal migrants and shipments of fentanyl from crossing their borders into the U.S.
But Trump on Thursday said the North American duties would be imposed "for a number of reasons" and said the tariff level "may or may not rise with time."
Trump also said he was still considering new tariffs on Chinese goods, citing its part in the fentanyl trade. He has threatened a 10% duty on all Chinese goods, after imposing punitive tariffs on some $370 billion worth of Chinese imports during his first term in office.
"With China I'm also thinking about something because they're sending fentanyl into our country and because of that they're causing us hundreds of thousands of deaths, so China is going to end up paying a tariff also for that and we're in the process of doing that," Trump told reporters.
"We'll make a determination on what it's going to be, but China has to stop sending fentanyl into our country and killing our people."
Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged in 2023 to work with then-president Joe Biden to curb fentanyl shipments into the U.S., but Beijing has called on Washington to take steps to curb demand for drugs.
Mexico's economy ministry declined comment on Trump's latest remarks. The office of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Steve Holland, Brendan O'Boyle and David Ljunggren; Writing by David Lawder and Jason Lange; Editing by Caitlin Webber and Deepa Babington)
