The Trump Administration on Thursday raised the possibility of imposing a 20 percent levy on Mexican imports to help pay for a border wall, a move that could cause Mexico to retaliate.

But any kind of trade war would put Colorado’s ranchers, manufacturers and natural gas producers most at risk, while also raising costs for U.S. consumers, trade experts said Thursday.

“Colorado firms rely on North American supply chains, and this import tariff will ultimately be passed on to the American consumer. Worse, it could lead to Mexico enacting retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods going into Mexico,” said Karen Gerwitz, president of the World Trade Center Denver.

Mexico is the state’s largest trading partner after Canada, but Canada’s share of Colorado exports has fallen from 24.5 percent in 2012 to 17.7 percent in 2015. Mexico’s share of Colorado exports, by contrast, has risen from 10.4 percent of the total in 2012 to 13.5 percent in 2015.

Mexico is especially important to meat producers in the state. Beef exports, chilled and frozen, represent the first and fourth largest export categories to Mexico, accounting for about $103 million in sales through November of last year.

Mexican consumers have also developed an appetite for Colorado pork and chicken, the export numbers show. Colorado pork sales in Mexico reached $33.3 million in the first 11 months of 2016, up from $1.97 million in the same period of 2015. Chicken exports have risen from from $3.6 million to $11.9 million.

And Colorado cheese sales, while down in recent years, represent the seventh-largest export category to Mexico. They were running at $26.9 million in the first 11 months of 2016. In Colorado, cheese production is synonymous with Leprino Foods, an important buyer of milk from the state’s dairy farmers.

After beef, aluminum can lids, a specialty of Broomfield-based Ball Corp., were the second-largest Colorado export to Mexico, accounting for $50.2 million in sales through November 2016. That is up from $10.4 million in the same period of 2015. Ball, the world’s largest can maker, recently built a can manufacturing plant in Monterrey, Mexico.

Another potential casualty of any trade war with Mexico could be U.S. natural gas producers, including those operating on Colorado’s West Slope.

Mexico has made a big investment to replace fuel oil and liquefied natural gas with cheaper natural gas from the U.S., said Jason Slingsby, an energy analyst at BTU Analytics in Lakewood.

U.S. natural gas exports via pipelines doubled between 2009 to 2016, due to new demand from Mexico, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Producers have invested billions of dollars into fields in west Texas under the assumption they could off-load any associated gas they produced into Mexico, which in turn gets an economic boost from having a cheaper source of energy.

“We remain confident the administration wouldn’t do anything to harm the largest energy investment of the last half century,” said David Ludlam, executive director of the West Slope Colorado Oil & Gas Association.

If U.S. gas can’t flow freely into Mexico, for whatever reason, it will further depress prices here, harming producers and the rural economies where they operate, Slingsby adds. That includes places like Garfield, Mesa and Rio Blanco counties.

“Trump is very pro oil and gas,” he said.