PALM BEACH, Fla. — Businesses and officials in Canada, Mexico and China were bracing for word Saturday on promised tariffs after days of trying to persuade President Donald Trump not to go ahead with them.

White House officials said Friday that Trump would order a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada, along with a 10% tariff on Chinese products.

Speaking to reporters Friday from the Oval Office, Trump said he would impose the levies as punishment for Canada, Mexico and China allowing drugs and migrants to flood into the United States. He insisted that the tariffs would not fuel inflation and suggested that he would move ahead with them regardless of any last-minute concessions from the other nations.

Trump is spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

The president was expected to sign an executive order Saturday putting the tariffs into effect. But the lack of clarity surrounding what, exactly, Trump planned to impose created even more uncertainty for global businesses Saturday.

Experts believe the tariffs could have broad impacts on the U.S., Canadian and Mexican economies, driving up prices for consumers and affecting jobs, although there was little doubt that pain would be felt more in Canada’s and Mexico’s smaller economies.

The Canadian government was notified Saturday by U.S. officials that the country’s goods will be subject to a 25 percent tariff, with the exception of Canadian oil, which will be hit with a 10 percent tariff, starting Tuesday.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is planning to respond to the tariffs, according to two Canadian government officials with knowledge of the notification.

Over the past few weeks, Mexican and Canadian officials have mounted efforts to avert the tariffs: Canada has reinforced its border with more staff, drones and helicopters, and Canadian officials have been traversing the United States trying to lobby key Republicans against the tariffs. Mexico has helped in aspects of Trump’s immigration crackdown by taking in thousands of deported migrants.

But officials in both nations have also been working on retaliation plans, gearing up for what might quickly become a North American trade war.

Lobbying groups for industries such as retail and agriculture, which could be among the hardest hit by retaliation from America’s trading partners, were scrambling for information about the levies but remained in the dark.

Trump said that the new tariffs would be on top of existing ones on products from Canada, Mexico and China.

Democrats were poised Saturday to point to the tariffs as an early example of Trump’s mismanagement of the economy, arguing that he was already taking steps that would raise prices on consumers.

A new analysis from the Budget Lab of Yale University estimated that the proposed tariffs could raise annual costs on households by roughly $1,300.

Trump is making a major political bet that his actions will not worsen inflation, cause financial aftershocks that could destabilize the worldwide economy or provoke a voter backlash.

AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of the electorate in last year’s election, found that the U.S. was split on support for tariffs.

It is possible that the tariffs could be short-lived if Canada and Mexico can reach a deal with Trump to more aggressively address illegal immigration and fentanyl smuggling.

Trump is honoring promises he made in the 2024 White House campaign that are at the core of his economic and national security philosophy, though Trump allies had played down the threat of higher import taxes as mere negotiating tactics.

The president is preparing more import taxes in a sign that tariffs will be an ongoing part of his second term.

On Friday, he mentioned imported computer chips, steel, oil and natural gas, as well as against copper, pharmaceutical drugs and imports from the European Union — moves that could essentially pit the U.S. against much of the global economy.

“You see the power of the tariff,” Trump told reporters Friday. “Nobody can compete with us because we have by far the biggest piggy bank.”

It is unclear how the tariffs could affect the business investments that Trump said would happen because of his plans to cut corporate tax rates and remove regulations. Tariffs tend to raise prices for consumers and businesses by making it more expensive to bring in foreign goods.

Many voters turned to Trump in the November election on the belief that he could better handle the inflation that spiked under Democratic President Joe Biden.

But inflation expectations are creeping upward in the University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment as respondents expect prices to rise by 3.3%. That would be higher than the actual 2.9% annual inflation rate in December’s consumer price index.

Trump has said that the government should raise more of its revenues from tariffs, as it did before the income tax became part of the Constitution in 1913. He claims, despite economic evidence to the contrary, that the U.S. was at its wealthiest in the 1890s under President William McKinley.

“We were the richest country in the world,” Trump said Friday. “We were a tariff country.”

Associated Press contributed.