President Donald Trump unveiled a parade of tariffs late Thursday on dozens of countries that will take effect Aug. 7, threatening to upend global commerce and trigger price increases for U.S. consumers.
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The White House punted on its self-imposed Aug. 1 deadline for the tariffs. Yet if they take effect as now planned, the fusillade of new tariffs will be applied on close to 70 countries spanning the globe from the United Kingdom to Laos, with a 15% import tax serving as the bare minimum. Nations that are friendly toward the U.S. didn’t escape steep import taxes: Switzerland will be hit with a 39% tariff under Trump’s new trade regime, the third highest rate on the list. It’s just below a 41% levy on Syria. Brazil faces a 50% tariff.
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The executive order establishing the tariffs said that persistent trade deficits composed “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.” The order is built on the same legal rationale that triggered an ongoing court fight over Trump’s emergency authority to unilaterally put new tariffs in place.
The moves amount to a replay of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs from April, meant to force countries to deliver big trade concessions to the U.S, though the new ones aren’t as sky-high. Those levies greatly unsettled financial markets and led to the president declaring a temporary, three-month pause to provide more time for negotiations. In the meantime, more than two dozen trading partners received letters from Trump assigning new tariff rates if they didn’t strike a sweeping trade deal on terms he deems more fair toward the U.S.
The Trump administration has since forged a string of trade agreements with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Indonesia, and the Philippines, among others. There’s an interim accord with China that U.S. officials say is likely to be extended past Aug 12. Earlier on Thursday, Trump said he reached a deal in “a very successful call” with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum not to hike existing tariffs for three months to give more breathing room for negotiations.
Canada doesn’t appear on course to be spared. The White House unveiled a separate executive order that’s set to impose a 35% tariff on Canadian imports starting Aug. 1, slamming it for failing to halt the flow of illegal drugs across the U.S. border. Tariffs won’t be applied to Canadian exports that meet an earlier trade agreement’s definition of North American products while steel and aluminum tariffs will remain in place.
Trump administration officials say that missing Trump’s trade deadline doesn’t mean countries can’t strike an agreement later. “If there’s not a deal by August 1, I would encourage market participants, corporate America, even the countries, not to panic, because you can still do a deal,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday.
Major U.S. companies are already reporting significant losses due to the tariffs. Ford Motors said it expects to lose $2 billion this year, almost half of it in the second quarter.
“That can only go on for so long because you’ve got to manage the tug and pull between consumer prices going up and investors not liking you [miss] the margin estimates that you had in the past,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina told Quartz.
The Yale Budget Lab has estimated that the average tariff rate for U.S. imports will reach a pre-World War II level of about 18%, the highest since 1933. Some GOP senators acknowledge that U.S. companies and consumers will be on the hook for Trump’s tariffs.
“I recognize there will be revenue brought in, but it’s like a sales tax,” Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota told Quartz earlier on Thursday. “It’s just a sales tax on foreign goods, but the American people will be part of it.”