WASHINGTON — President Trump said he’ll begin rolling out “reciprocal” tariffs Friday on countries that have yet to reach a tentative deal with his team — with the new US trade taxes hitting as high as “60 or 70%.
“We’re going to start sending letters out to various countries starting [Friday]. We’ll probably have 10 or 12 go out,” Trump told reporters after midnight as he returned from a speech at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.
“I think by the 9th [of July] they’ll be fully covered, and they will range in value from maybe 60 or 70% tariffs to 10 and 20% tariffs.”
The upper rates indicate Trump may boost some nations’ figures even higher than described in his April 2 “Liberation Day” rollout, which established a new 10% baseline tariff — roughly triple prior rates — and high duties on countries with large trade imbalances with the US.
The highest previously announced “reciprocal” rates — pegged to a nation’s trade deficit with the US — were 49% for clothing- and shoes-manufacturing hub Cambodia, 48% for next-door Laos and 47% for the world’s top vanilla exporter, Madagascar.
“We’ve done the final form, and it’s basically going to explain what the countries are going to be paying in tariffs,” Trump told reporters early Friday.
“It’s a lot of money for the country, but we’re giving them a bargain. … I don’t want to stretch it too much, we want to keep it pretty reasonable.”
Trump said he expected to send up to a dozen letters to countries each day until the Wednesday deadline that he set for negotiations.
“As we get to the smaller countries, we’re pretty much going to keep the tariffs the same,” he said.
“They’ll start to pay on Aug. 1. The money will start to come into the United States on Aug. 1 in pretty much all cases.”
It’s unclear which countries will face tariffs in the range of 60 to 70%, but the renewed tough trade talk comes as positive economic indicators buoy Trump’s domestic standing — with job growth exceeding expectations again in June, inflation remaining near the Federal Reserve’s 2% target (2.4% in May) and major stock market indices notching record highs this past week.
