President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday his intention to impose tariffs exceeding 10% on smaller countries, including those in Africa and the Caribbean.
“We’ll probably set one tariff for all of them,” Trump said, adding that it could be “a little over 10% tariff” on goods from at least 100 nations.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick pointed out that these tariffs would target nations in Africa and the Caribbean, regions that typically engage in minimal trade with the U.S., and therefore might have a limited impact on Trump’s objectives to correct global trade imbalances.
Earlier this month, the president had sent letters to approximately two dozen countries and the European Union, specifying the introduction of a new tariff rate effective from August 1.
Those countries generally faced tax rates on the goods close to the April 2 rates announced by the U.S. president, whose rollout of historically high import taxes for the U.S. caused financial markets to panic and led to Trump setting a 90-day negotiating period that expired July 9.
Trump also said he would “probably” announce tariffs on pharmaceutical drugs at the “end of the month.”
The president said he would start out at a lower tariff rate and give companies a year to build domestic factories before they faced higher import tax rates. Trump said computer chips would face a similar style of tariffs.
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