President Donald Trump has paused, at least temporarily, 25% tariffs he’d announced against Mexico and Canada. Those two countries also happen to be Arizona’s biggest trading partners, which means the proposed tariffs are causing concern among business leaders in the state.
Todd Sanders, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, and president of the Arizona-Mexico Commission, is one of them and joined The Show to discuss.

Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Good morning, Todd.
TODD SANDERS: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
BRODIE: Thanks for being here. So from your perspective, how, how concerned are you about the possibility of, of these really any any additional tariffs against Mexico and Canada going into effect?
SANDERS: Well, I think if you watch the markets as they opened up yesterday, dropping 650 points, I think probably much of the country, much of the business community was and remains concerned about the prospect of a 25% tariff for Mexico and Canada going into effect.
BRODIE: Does that have any additional importance here? I mean, especially with Mexico being our largest trading partner, and it doesn't seem particularly close.
SANDERS: No, it's, it's true. We've built a very solid economic relationship with Mexico over, over decades. And, the impacts to Arizona could be substantial. I think the third, the combined trade numbers are about $35 billion for both countries and for Arizona.
We have some significant exports to Mexico if they were to, impose the same type of tariff which would, which would impact us and then of course, goods coming over to Arizona, which, in, in many ways, we would probably see an impact immediately, for instance, in the grocery stores in terms of agricultural products, there would be a significant and swift impact.
BRODIE: What are you hearing from some of your counterparts, south of the border? You serve as I mentioned as president of the Arizona Mexico Commission, who's one of their main goals is to facilitate good economic ties between Arizona and Mexico.
SANDERS: Well, leading up to the imposition of the tariffs, I think there was a, a lot of questions about what that might look like, whether or not it might happen, obviously concerns for, for their economy as well.
And then I think today, some of the discussions have revolved around whether or not this is about, for instance, fentanyl, or is it, is it about something else and whether or not the pause, is going to, is, is going to end and, and it's gonna be about something else. Or about the free trade agreement. So I think just a lot of questions about where, where the what the next step might be.
BRODIE: Well, so let's talk about the fact that yes, there's been a pause, a 30-day pause for both Canada and Mexico, but as you referenced that still leaves some amount of uncertainty. So like what is sort of this yo-yoing back and forth, there's going to be tariffs, there's not tariffs, maybe there will be tariffs. So what does that do for the the the business relationship and sort of the economic impact here in Arizona?
SANDERS: Well, yeah, economies can be fragile things. We've we've saw that obviously with, with the pandemic, we, we see what the, the, the result of interest rates going up very quickly, but, but barely coming down even with even, even with a lot of work by the Fed, inflation is still with us, not to the, not to the place where we needed to be.
So there is concern about uncertainty in the market whipsawing the economy back and forth and what implications that might have, for the future. We, we, one of the biggest barometers that we see on a daily basis is going to the gas pump. Certainly, there is that potential of increasing fuel costs for folks, and, food costs.
So certainly from, from that standpoint having an unstable economic picture causes, I think businesses to slow down on spending, maybe not higher where they were looking to hire. And certainly, if prices go up by 25% across the board on certain items, then we could be looking at an increase in inflation. So definitely difficult to see an upside, at least from my perspective.
BRODIE: Is there a concern that regardless of whether the tariffs actually go into effect in 30 days or not, that, for example, maybe companies in Mexico or Canada might say, OK, usually, you know, we traditionally have bought product X from a company in Arizona, but we're really just not sure what that situation and what those prices are gonna look like. Might they just look for supplies elsewhere and Arizona companies could sort of permanently lose out on, on customers they'd had.
SANDERS: Well, yeah, like, like I said earlier, businesses don't like uncertainty, and, and when that uncertainty exists with, for instance, a potential supplier and you could look at another country, you could go south, you could look at China, you could look, you could look, Europe, and, and, and certainly there is the, the prospect of Arizona losing out. And certainly when you think about it, the United States losing market share in Mexico to countries like China who have made significant inroads into South America. So definitely something that I hope the administration is paying attention to.
BRODIE: So Todd, quickly before we let you go, what you mentioned agriculture, what are, what other industries in Arizona are stand to be most affected by by these tariffs?
SANDERS: You bet. Well, agriculture is the biggest of about $3 billion but, computer and electronic products that we export to Mexico as well as electronic equipment, appliances, and, and those combined are, are close to $2.5 billion. So a significant amount of items that we send to Mexico along with mineral and ore from Arizona things like copper. So all parts of our economy, I think would be impacted in some way if these, if these tariffs went into effect.