Unlike the losing contestants on “Let’s Make Deal,” nations that failed to reach trade agreements with President Donald Trump are likely to pay for it — big time.
Trump released an Executive Order on Thursday to impose tariffs on nations that have not used the time since Trump’s April 2 declaration of mass tariffs on trading partners to strike a trade deal with the United States.
Tariff rates vary by country.
Although Trump had previously said tariffs would take effect Friday, Aug. 1, his Thursday order pushed that imposition date on the new tariffs back a week to Aug. 7 for the stragglers trying to make a deal.
Nations, such as China and Mexico, that have been negotiating deals are exempt from the tariffs, for now.
All told. There are 68 nations on the list to face tariffs, per the Associated Press. The European Union is also on the list, although it is working out a deal with Trump
Trump announced this week that last-minute trade agreements had been reached with Pakistan and South Korea.
Trump noted that over the past four months, not all nations have been involved in talks.
“There’s 200 countries,’’ Trump said. “You can’t talk to all of them.’’
Have Trump’s tariffs been effective so far?
Switzerland said it is ready to develop a “negotiated solution” with Trump, according to Reuters.
Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te said the order’s 20 percent tariff rate was “temporary.”
South Africa’s Trade Minister Parks Tau has said he wants “real, practical interventions” to avert the 30 percent tariff.
Trump’s order offered a reminder of why he was focused on tariffs in the first place.
“I found that conditions reflected in large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States that has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States. I declared a national emergency with respect to that threat, and to deal with that threat,” he wrote.
Trump said his focus is on “the continued lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships and the impact of foreign trading partners’ disparate tariff rates and non-tariff barriers on U.S. exports, the domestic manufacturing base, critical supply chains, and the defense industrial base.”
Speaking in general terms of nations without deals in place, Trump wrote that “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.”
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