Throughout his successful campaign and transition period, President Donald Trump often and repeatedly threatened to impose new tariffs on imports from foreign nations, including from allied and friendly top trading partners like Canada and Mexico.

On Thursday, Trump suggested that he had no choice but to move forward with the imposition of 25% tariffs against the nation's neighbors to the north and south, with a final decision likely to come by this weekend, The Hill reported.

Trump has frequently argued that such tariffs are necessary to not only help balance out trade deficits but also to pressure Canada and Mexico to cooperate more closely with the U.S. on border security and stem the illicit cross-border flow of illegal migrants, criminals and gang members, and deadly drugs like fentanyl.

Trump prepares to announce new tariffs on Canada and Mexico

"We’ll be announcing the tariffs on Canada and Mexico for a number of reasons," President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, again citing illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and trade imbalances.

"I’ll be putting the tariff of 25% on Canada and Mexico, and we will really have to do that because we have very big deficits with those countries," he continued. "Those tariffs may or may not rise with time."

Trump revealed that he has not yet decided whether to exclude imported crude oil from the new tariffs and said, "We may or may not. We’re going to make that determination, probably tonight, on oil. Because they send us oil, we’ll see. It depends on what the price is. If the oil is properly priced, if they treat us properly, which they don’t."

"Look, Mexico and Canada have never been good to us on trade," the president added. "They’ve treated us very unfairly on trade, and we will be able to make that up very quickly because we don’t need the products that they have."

Could be imposed as soon as this weekend

Reuters reported Friday that, according to three unnamed administration officials, the new 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico would likely be implemented on March 1.

That would grant those two nations roughly one month to try to negotiate exemptions on certain goods, which one source suggested would be "few and far between," or to meet President Trump's demands to avoid the new tariffs altogether.

However, NBC News reported that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated to reporters that the tariffs could go into effect as soon as Saturday, February 1, and also warned Canadian and Mexican leaders to discuss things directly with the president before publicly making "outlandish comments" about retaliatory measures.

China and BRICS nations also targeted

It isn't just Canada and Mexico that may soon find it more costly to export their goods into the U.S., as the Associated Press reported that President Trump remains committed to his plan to impose an additional 10% tariff on top of all other existing tariffs on imported Chinese goods.

Trump also recently threatened up to 100% tariffs on the so-called BRICS nations -- a trade group consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, among others -- over their ongoing efforts to try to devalue or replace the U.S. dollar as the primary currency for international trade.

"We are going to require a commitment from these seemingly hostile Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy," Trump said in a Truth Social post. "They can go find another sucker Nation. There is no chance that BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, or anywhere else, and any Country that tries should say hello to Tariffs, and goodbye to America!"

And, interestingly enough, while Democratic and media critics have long insisted that Trump's tariffs will not impact the targeted nations but only result in higher prices for U.S. consumers, The Washington Post quietly reported on Thursday that Canada is bracing itself for the "profound" negative effects of new tariffs, including substantially reduced trade with the U.S., a devalued Canadian dollar through price inflation, and even an economic recession.