The president-elect said that he would impose the across-the-board tariffs on Day 1 and that they would stay in place until Canada, Mexico and China halted the flow of drugs and migrants.

Officials from Mexico, Canada and China warned U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's threat of imposing hefty tariffs on goods from the three largest U.S. trading partners would harm the economies of all involved and would risk aggravating inflation and damaging job markets.

The popular wisdom had become that he wasn’t really that serious, and the key bit of evidence for that was his nomination of hedge fund investor Scott Bessent as his Treasury Secretary, someone seen as a moderate when it came to tariffs compared with others whose names were floated for the role.