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Trump issues order imposing new global tariff rates effective Aug. 7

The executive order follows through on the president's recent trade agreements with some trading partners and his threats to slap punishing new duties on others.

By Daniel Desrochers and Ari Hawkins

President Donald Trump signed executive orders on Thursday evening to impose tariffs of between 15 and 41 percent on goods shipped to the U.S. from more than 67 countries, ratcheting up tariffs to the highest levels in more than a century.

The new duties, however, won’t go into effect until Aug. 7 — giving countries yet another window to try to negotiate them down.

“This is historic, this is a new system of trade,” said a senior administration official, granted anonymity as part of the terms of a call. “It’s what I would call the Trump round of negotiations.”

According to the text of the first order, the Trump administration is maintaining its 10 percent so-called baseline tariff on countries where the U.S. has a trade surplus — i.e. it sells more American products to those countries than it imports from them. And it officially imposes the 15 percent rate that Trump agreed to set as part of negotiations with leading trading partners like the European Union, Japan and South Korea. The Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia also reached tentative agreements with the administration that set their duties at 19-20 percent.

Other countries, mainly smaller economies, face far higher rates, topping out at 41 percent for Syria, which is emerging from a civil war, and 40 percent for Myanmar, which is still in the midst of one. The Southeast Asian nation of Laos also faces a 40 percent tariff, and Iraq will be hit with a 35 percent duty.

Bigger trading partners like Switzerland also face a significant tariff hike — to 39 percent.

Trump also signed a second order raising tariffs on Canada, one of the country’s biggest trading partners, from 25 to 35 percent for goods that are not compliant with an existing North American trade deal known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The senior official told reporters that Canada hasn’t “shown the same level of constructiveness that we’ve seen from the Mexican side.” Trump announced earlier Thursday that he was maintaining the 25 percent tariff on Mexico for another 90 days after a phone call with their president, Claudia Sheinbaum. Higher tariffs on Canada take effect Friday.

The executive actions suggests that Trump decided to punish countries that he did not believe offered enough concessions since the president first threatened to impose his “reciprocal” tariffs on April 2.

“Some trading partners have agreed to, or are on the verge of agreeing to, meaningful trade and security commitments with the United States, thus signaling their sincere intentions to permanently remedy the trade barriers,” the global order says.

“Other trading partners, despite having engaged in negotiations, have offered terms that, in my judgment, do not sufficiently address imbalances in our trading relationship or have failed to align sufficiently with the United States on economic and national-security matters,”

“There are also some trading partners that have failed to engage in negotiations with the United States or to take adequate steps to align sufficiently with the United States on economic and national security matters,” it continues.

White House officials said Thursday night that they expect to strike additional agreements with countries ahead of the new Aug. 7 implementation date for the tariffs. “We have some deals, and I don’t want to get ahead of the president on those deals,” the senior administration official told reporters. “I’ll just say generally, we have more to come.”

Taiwan is hoping to be one of those countries. The semiconductor powerhouse faces a 20 percent tariff in a week’s time, but in a statement released late Thursday, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te suggested the rate was “provisional.”

“Due to the procedural arrangement of the negotiations, the Taiwan-U.S. sides have not yet concluded the final meeting. Therefore, the U.S. has temporarily announced a 20% tariff rate for Taiwan,” President Lai said. “Once an agreement is reached in the future, there is hope that the tariff rate can be further lowered. Both sides will also continue negotiations on supply chain cooperation and issues related to Section 232 tariffs.”