Experts say a volley of tariffs between the U.S. and Canada could tip both countries into a recession and severely disrupt cross-border commerce between the key trading partners. 

A Canadian government official said Wednesday it is exploring potential retaliatory levies on certain U.S. imports after President-elect Donald Trump on Monday threatened to impose a 25% tariff on all goods from Canada and Mexico on his first day in office. The official, who stressed no final decision has been taken, spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum earlier this week also hinted that the country could retaliate against the U.S. with its own tariffs on American products. Trump said the stepped-up duties are necessary to curb the flow of undocumented immigrants and illicit drugs from Mexico and Canada.

“Blanket 25% tariffs on Canada threatened by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump earlier this week would push Canada into a recession in 2025, cause a sharp spike in inflation and force the Bank of Canada to hold rates higher next year,” economist Michael Davenport of Oxford Economics said in a report Thursday.

Inflation in Canada would top 7% by mid-2025, while unemployment would approach 8% by year-end, according to the investment research firm. The country’s auto, energy and heavy manufacturing industries, which rely on exports to the U.S., would take the biggest hit, he added, noting that the sectors also depend on components from American suppliers. 

Canada fired back with duties of its own when Trump slapped tariffs on the country’s steel and aluminum exports to the U.S. during his first stint in the White House. Canada targeted U.S. products including whiskey and yogurt, most of which came from one plant in Wisconsin, home state of then-House Speaker Paul Ryan. 

Canadian officials say lumping Canada in with Mexico is unfair but say they are ready to make new investments in border security and work with the Trump administration to lower the numbers from Canada. The Canadians are also worried about an influx of migrants if Trump follows through with his plan for mass deportations.

U.S. also would feel the pain

Trump and his allies, including his choice for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, have argued that tariffs deployed during his first term advanced U.S. economic aims and didn’t boost inflation.

But the U.S. likely wouldn’t go unscathed in a full-blown trade war with Canada. Across-the-board tariffs on American products would likely cause a “shallow” recession in the U.S. and fracture political relations between the allies, according to Oxford. 

Although the U.S. is the world’s leading oil producer, Canada supplies roughly 20% of the oil used stateside. As a result, U.S. gas prices could shoot up 30 to 40 cents a gallon, and potentially up to 70 cents, soon after Trump levied the tariffs on Canada, Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told CBS MoneyWatch.

With so much on the line, the incoming Trump administration is more likely to impose limited tariffs on Canadian products, such as steel, lumber and farm products like dairy.

“Despite Trump’s latest threat of blanket tariffs, we still think it’s unlikely that the Trump administration will put tariffs on Canadian autos and energy exports, which make up about 40% of total Canadian exports to the U.S.,” Davenport said. “The North American energy sector and auto supply chains are highly integrated across the U.S.-Canada border and any tariffs on these goods would also have a significant negative effect on the US economy.”

contributed to this report.

German investigators suspect a Berlin doctor of killing eight elderly patients under his care and setting fire to some of their homes to cover up his crimes, prosecutors said Thursday.

The suspect, a 40-year-old whose identity has not been released, worked in palliative care for an at-home nursing service.

He was remanded in custody in August on suspicion of killing four women aged 72 to 94, and Berlin prosecutors have now linked him to four more deaths of men and women aged 61 to 83.

Police in August said the man was being investigated on four counts of manslaughter, one count of arson and three counts of attempted arson.

Berlin prosecutors said they were now treating the alleged killings as murder cases.

“The accused appears to have had no motive for killing the people other than the act of killing itself,” they said, accusing him of a “lust for murder.”

Police in August said the man was suspected of killing four female patients in the care of his nursing service in Berlin between June 11 and July 24.

In one case, an 87-year-old woman was resuscitated after emergency services arrived, but died later in hospital.

In another, the suspect allegedly started a blaze but the fire went out.

“When he realized this, he allegedly informed a relative of the woman and claimed that he was standing in front of her flat and that nobody was answering the doorbell,” police said.

In the four new cases, which date from June 2022 to April 2024, the suspect is accused of killing two men and two women in Berlin.

In one case, he is suspected of administering a cocktail of medications to a 70-year-old woman in her apartment in Berlin’s Tempelhof district and then starting a fire.

The fire department, called by a neighbor, was able to prevent the flames from spreading to the rest of the building.

He is also accused of administering deadly medications to two men, aged 70 and 83, and to a 61-year-old woman.

The case recalls that of the notorious German nurse Niels Hoegel, who was sentenced in 2019 to life in prison for murdering 85 patients in his care.

Hoegel, believed to be Germany’s most prolific serial killer, murdered hospital patients with lethal injections between 2000 and 2005, before he was eventually caught in the act.

A former colleague told the German newspaper Bild that Högel was nicknamed “Resuscitation Rambo” because of the way he “pushed everyone else aside” when patients needed to be resuscitated, the BBC reported.

In a more recent case, a 27-year-old male nurse was sentenced to life in prison in 2023 for murdering two patients by deliberately administering unprescribed drugs.

The nurse, identified as Mario G., was also found guilty on six counts of attempted murder.

During his trial, Mario G. admitted to injecting patients with sedatives and other drug cocktails while working in the recovery room at a Munich hospital.

The case in Berlin comes just weeks after a British doctor admitted posing as a nurse and trying to kill his mother’s long-term partner by injecting the man with poison disguised as a COVID-19 vaccine.

In August, a British judge sentenced nurse Lucy Letby to spend the rest of her life in prison for murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others while working at a hospital in northern England.