Trump threatens to double tariffs on Mexico if it does not halt migrants

NEW: Donald Trump threatens to double tariffs on Mexico if it does not halt more than a thousand migrants walking north toward the US border.

Donald Trump is threatening to double tariffs on Mexico.

The trigger, more than a thousand migrants currently walking north toward the US border. Trump's message to Mexico City is blunt, stop them before they arrive or the tariff rate doubles. That's the whole offer. No carve-outs, no negotiation window mentioned, just a caravan on one side and a trade penalty on the other.

For President Claudia Sheinbaum, this is an impossible squeeze. Mexico sends roughly eighty percent of its exports to the United States, so a doubling of tariffs isn't a bruise, it's a body blow to her economy. And she's been here before, Trump has used tariffs as a migration lever repeatedly, and Mexico has usually blinked, deploying troops to break up caravans.

So now a thousand people on foot are carrying the weight of a multi-billion dollar trade relationship. Watch what Mexico's National Guard does in the next few days. That will tell you who blinked.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.