With one day before millions of Americans head to the polls, former President Donald Trump said if reelected he would impose a 25% tariff on imports if Mexico does not end the “onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country.”

Speaking at a campaign rally on Monday in Raleigh, North Carolina — his first of four stops across three states on the eve of the presidential election — Trump said he would present the ultimatum to new Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on the first day of his presidency or sooner.

“And it's only got a 100% chance of working because if that doesn't work, I'll make it 50,” Trump said to applause. “And if that doesn't work, I'll make it 75 for the tough guys. Then I’ll make it a hundred. And at some point, they'll have so many soldiers on their southern border [to deter migrants entering from Central America].”

The campaign promise was reminiscent of Trump’s famous vow in 2015 to construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and have Mexico pay for it. As president, Trump delivered on building a fraction of that wall, but the U.S. received no financial assistance from Mexico for it.

The Republican nominee has again made immigration a top issue in this campaign. While President Joe Biden’s administration was slow to get a handle on a migrant surge at the southwest border, Trump has misleadingly accused Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent Tuesday, of creating “open borders” and blamed them for violent crimes committed by undocumented migrants.

“I just want to say that the day that I take office, the migrant invasion ends and the restoration of our country begins,” Trump said. “The United States is now an occupied country, but it will soon be an occupied country no longer. Nov. 5, 2024, will be liberation day in America.”

He claimed Harris would open the borders on “the first day” if she’s elected. The vice president has said she would push for Congress to pass a bipartisan immigration bill negotiated earlier this year, and she has attacked Trump for urging Republicans to reject the plan, reportedly because he wanted to campaign on unresolved border issues. 

The legislation would create funding to hire thousands of new border patrol agents, buy the latest in detection equipment, overhaul asylum laws and give the president new authorities to close the border.  

Trump often uses the threat of tariffs to pressure foreign countries into taking actions he favors or punish them for their economic practices. 

He has repeatedly boasted about China paying hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs to the U.S., but economists say American businesses are the ones that pay import taxes to the U.S. government. Researchers have found U.S. firms and consumers have almost entirely footed the bill for tariffs imposed during the Trump and Biden administrations.

Economists, including 16 Nobel Prize laureates, have warned that Trump’s proposed tariffs of at least 10% on all imports and at least 60% on Chinese goods would reignite economic inflation.

Trump repeated several false and misleading claims during Monday’s rally, including that the Biden-Harris administration has released more than 13,000 “illegal aliens convicted of murder” into the U.S., that FEMA has not responded to hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida because it diverted funding to “bringing in illegal migrants” and that Springfield, Ohio, has been plagued by an influx of 30,000 migrants, whom he said he considers to be in the country illegally despite their legal status.

Trump claimed he waited until the day before the election to unveil his plan to tariff Mexican imports because he didn’t want Harris to steal his idea.

“She's a low-IQ individual,” he said. “I don't want to have her say, ‘You know, I had an idea last night while I was sleeping.’”

Trump made a final plea to North Carolina voters to support him and reject Harris at the polls. North Carolina is among the key battleground states that could determine the election.

“You're going to say, ‘You've done a terrible job. You're grossly incompetent. We're not going to take it anymore. Kamala, you're fired,’” Trump said, reciting his famous catchphrase from his time on the reality TV show “The Apprentice.”

Trump is also scheduled to hold rallies Monday in Reading, Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh; and Grand Rapids, Michigan.