The Trump administration has announced a wave of new tariffs on dozens of countries, with Canada one of the hardest hit by the president’s escalating trade war.
Trump has raised the tariffs on Canadian goods to 35 percent, where it was previously 25 percent, and Brazil to 50 percent. The White House blamed Canada’s supposed “continued inaction and retaliation” toward the Trump administration’s trade policies as the reason for the sharp increase.
Some of the nations facing the most severe increases include Syria, which will face a 41 percent tariff; Laos and Myanmar at 40 percent; Switzerland at 39 percent; Iraq and Serbia at 35 percent; and Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Libya and South Africa, which will all be tariffed at 30 percent.
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Taiwan will have tariffs set at 20 percent, Pakistan at 19 percent and Israel, Iceland, Norway, Fiji, Ghana, Guyana and Ecuador among the countries with imported goods taxed at 15 percent.
The new trade policy and tariff plan was announced just hours before the August 1 deadline.
However, the new measures will not go into effect on Friday. Trump has delayed the tariffs for another week, until August 7, reportedly to give U.S. Customs and Border Protection time to make changes in how it polices incoming goods and to collect the new duties from imports.
On Thursday night, the White House announced a "universal" tariff for goods coming into U.S. will remain at 10 percent. That is the same level set during his "Liberation Day" event in early April when he first announced the levies.
That 10 percent rate will only apply to countries with a trade surplus — in other words, countries to which the U.S. exports more than it imports. A senior administration official told the Associated Press that most countries have trade surpluses with the U.S.
Countries with a trade deficit with the U.S. -of which there are around 40 - will be subject a tariff of at least 15 percent under the new policy.
For many of the countries subjected to Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs levied in April, that rate will be lower than what they were previously paying, though it will be higher for a small group of nations.
“President Trump is using tariffs as a necessary and powerful tool to put America First after many years of unsustainable trade deficits that threaten our economy and national security,” the White House said in a statement.
The CEO of Canada’s Chamber of Commerce, Candace Laing, condemned the Trump administration for the 35 percent increase her country faces.
“The White House fact sheet should be called a fact-less sheet when it comes to basing trade decisions about Canada on the fentanyl emergency,” Laing said in a statement. “More fact-less tariff turbulence does not advance North American economic security. Businesses — in Canada and the U.S. — urgently need certainty.”
The order capped off a hectic Thursday as nations sought to continue negotiating with Trump.
On Thursday morning, before the announcement, Trump took a phone call with Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum on trade. As a result, the U.S. president said he would enter into a 90-day negotiating period with Mexico, one of the nation's largest trading partners.
The current 25 percent tariff rates are staying in place, down from the 30 percent he had threatened earlier.
"We avoided the tariff increase announced for tomorrow and we got 90 days to build a long-term agreement through dialogue," Sheinbaum wrote on X after the call..
The president of Taiwan issued a statement clarifying that the 20 percent tariff it is currently facing is only “provisional” pending the closure of a deal with the U.S. that could potentially see the rate lowered.
“Earlier, the U.S. side informed Taiwan’s negotiating team in Washington that a provisional tariff rate of 20 percent would be applied to Taiwan,” Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te said in a statement on Facebook.
According to Ching-te, the parties have not concluded their negotiations.
“If a final agreement is reached later, the rate may be lowered,” he wrote.
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