White House says Mexico, Canada and 'other countries' could receive trade tariff exemptions

The President wants the two countries to renegotiate Nafta

Sanders is keeping the door open for other countries to qualify for their own exemptions (AP)

President Donald Trump is considering exempting America's neighbours to the north and south from tariffs the White House has been publicly considering imposing on imports of steel and aluminium.

The door for even more exemptions was left open Wednesday afternoon when White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the news about Canada and Mexico during her daily press briefing.

"There are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries as well, based on that process," she said, noting that other countries could see the same type of treatment. "That would be a case-by-case and country-by-country basis but it would be determined [by] whether or not there is a national security exemption."

The White House says that Mr Trump's tariffs will be announced by the end of next week. The proposal has received criticism from a range of interested parties, including the international community, and other leaders in the President's own party, like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

The potential exemptions are largely seen as a sign that the White House — which has steadfastly insisted that it will impose the tariffs no matter what people say — is yielding to those anti-tariff pressures. Mr Trump has said that the US should slap a 10 per cent tariff on steel, and a 25 per cent tariff on aluminium, but has indicated that he might not impose the measures on Canada and Mexico if the North American Free Trade Agreement is renegotiated in good faith.

But, while the White House pushes those renegotiations, some have feared that its insistence on the policy could spark a trade war that would damage not only the US economy, but also the global economy.

Mr Trump's Commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, has tried to downplay those concerns, saying that the Trump administration is uninterested in creating that sort of crisis. They are working hard to ensure that a trade war does not cross over from being a fear into being a reality.

"We're not trying to blow up the world," Mr Ross said earlier this week on CNBC. "There's no intention of that. We want to balance our needs to fix the trade deficit with the needs of the economy, and the needs of the global economy itself."

The notion of new tariffs initially sent the markets into a slump, as traders worried about the long term impacts of such a trade war, but have since rebounded following Ms Sanders' remarks about tariff exemptions for the US' neighbours.

The Dow Jones industrial average, for example, had dropped roughly 300 points Wednesday, but rebounded to within a 50 point deficit following the press conference.