Sweeping import tariffs have some worried
Here’s what to know as Trump’s sweeping tariffs arrive.
President Donald Trump pressed his case for global tariffs Monday by posting a list on social media of U.S. companies considering major domestic expansion plans, hours after threatening Russia and Iran with “secondary” tariffs and suggesting levies will help the U.S. auto industry “make a lot of money.”
Trump has repeatedly said he will announce details Wednesday for his tariffs aimed at curtailing the flow of foreign goods into the U.S. Economists warn that tariffs will drive up prices for Americans, but Trump has focused on the hundreds billions of dollars in new investment projects companies are planning to avoid the import taxes.
Trump said his tariffs won’t just target nations that contribute most to the U.S. trade deficit.
“You’d start with all countries,” Trump told reporters Sunday night aboard Air Force One. “There’s not a cutoff.”
Trump’s remarks provided clarification on the scope of the tariffs after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently said the 15% of nations with persistent trade imbalances with the U.S. would be most impacted by the tariffs. Bessent has called these the “Dirty 15” countries.
Amid growing economic anxieties at home and abroad, Trump last week softened his tone on the tariffs, saying they will be “more lenient” than some nations are expecting. Yet he made clear Sunday the tariff rates will be significant.
“It will be substantial money for their countries,” Trump said.
Developments:
∎ Gold prices reached a record high of $3,128.06 per ounce Monday as the impending Trump tariffs prompted investors to seek the safety of the precious metal. The cost of gold has risen by 18% this year.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to say how many countries would face tariffs in Trump’s announcement Wednesday but said they would offset unfair treatment the U.S. has faced for decades.
She cited a 700% tariff in Japan on U.S. rice, a 100% tariff in India on U.S. agricultural products and a nearly 300% tariff in Canada on U.S. butter and cheese. India has offered to reduce its tariffs to appease Trump.
“It has put a lot of Americans out of business and out of work over the past several decades,” Leavitt said. “It’s time for reciprocity.”
She said Trump is not concerned with the stock-market selloff ahead of the tariff announcement.
“The president has always said the stock market is a snapshot of a moment in time and he’s doing what’s best for Main Street,” Leavitt said. “Wall Street will work out just fine in this administration, just like they did in the first one.”
− Bart Jansen
Investors wary of the anticipated Trump tariffs drove European shares down to their lowest close in two months Monday amid growing concerns of a global economic slowdown.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index .STOXX fell 1.5%, extending losses to a fourth consecutive session and logging its biggest daily decline in nearly three weeks. Meantime, the region’s volatility index reached a near three-week high.
Jason Draho, head of asset allocation Americas for UBS Global Wealth Management, said the market uncertainty brought by the tariff threat is not going away soon.
“Uncertainty and market volatility are likely to stay high in the near term as investors recalibrate their outlooks after these events,” Draho said, referring to Wednesday’s tariffs announcement and the release of U.S. payrolls data later in the week.
In addition to the extra cost of buying a car expected from the Trump tariffs, a requirement for driving a vehicle also figures to get more expensive.
The average full-cover auto insurance policy may cost about 8% more − or close to $200 − by the end of the year, according to an analysis by Insurify. The actual number will probably be higher because the analysis was done before Trump imposed 25% tariffs on aluminum and steel and announced the updated auto tariffs.
“It might not be intuitive to people that the tariffs would end up raising people’s car insurance rates, and the main way they do that is because tariffs would increase the price of car parts,” said Matt Brannon, an Insurify data journalist who completed the analysis. “The cost of car insurance is based in part on the cost of car parts.”
− Betty Lin-Fisher
Trump said he wants to spur more manufacturing in the United States with his new tariff targeting foreign car imports, but defining an American-made car isn’t easy. Online automotive marketplace Cars.com found just over half of new inventory vehicles saw final assembly in the U.S. About 19% were assembled in Mexico, 4.2% in Canada and 1.4% in China, as previously reported by USA TODAY.
“No cars are actually 100% made in the United States, with parts sourced from the United States,” Edmunds consumer insights analyst Joseph Yoon said. “It’s going to be a big, big deal for the auto industry, globally, if the tariffs are implemented and enforced at face value.” Read more here.
− Bailey Schulz
China, Japan and South Korea agreed to jointly respond to U.S. tariffs, a social media account affiliated with Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said Monday. The comments came as trade ministers for the three countries discussed economics Sunday for the first time in five years to brace for Trump’s tariffs.
Japan and South Korea are seeking to import semiconductor raw materials from China, and China is also interested in purchasing chip products from Japan and South Korea, according to the post on Weibo by Yuyuan Tantian, who is affiliated with CCTV.
All three countries are major U.S. trading partners.
Many trade experts and economists say it’s unlikely a significant share of firms with overseas factories will move established supply chains halfway around the world under the threat of on-again, off-again tariffs whose duration is uncertain in a tumultuous economic climate. Those that do would have to grapple with severe shortages of skilled workers.
Trump’s tariffs during his first term led to more job losses in industries forced to pay the higher duties than gained in sectors protected by the import fees, studies show.
“This is not going to succeed at reviving U.S. manufacturing,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Read more here.
− Paul Davidson
Shawn Fain, president of United Auto Workers union, endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. But he was bullish on Trump’s tariffs in an interview Sunday on CBS News’ Face the Nation. Fain says 90,000 U.S. automitive jobs and 65 factories have vanished amid “unfair trade laws” dating back more than 30 years. U.S. plants have excess capacity and “could bring work back in very short order,” Fain said.
“Tariffs aren’t the total solution,” Fain said. “Tariffs are a tool in the toolbox to get these companies to do the right thing, and the intent behind it is to bring jobs back here. … American, working-class people have been left behind for decades, and they’re sick of it.”
E.J. Antoni, a public finance economist and senior fellow at the conservative Committee to Unleash Prosperity, says claims that tariffs will fuel rampant inflation “do not align with the facts.”
“Both economic theory and economic history show tariffs are always at least partly paid for by exporters, not just customers,” Antoni wrote in his opinion piece for Fox News earlier this month. “That is why other nations love imposing heavy tariffs on American industry. It is a way to force U.S. exporters into subsidizing the world.”
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, on Monday urged Trump to reconsider sweeping tariffs that Trump has said will include duties on imports from all U.S. trading partners.
“Think about it, Mr. President and dear American friends, before you decide to impose tariffs against your closest allies,” Tusk said in a video posted on X. “Cooperation is always better than confrontation.”
Tusk touted Poland’s partnership with the U.S., saying he just finished signing the latest agreement between the two countries regarding defense cooperation.
“You have only friends here, and I can say the same thing about Europe as a whole,” Tusk said. “You have friends and trusted allies from Portugal to Poland, from Denmark to Greece.”
The investment plans on the list Trump posted on Truth Social include Cincinnati-based GE Aerospace. The company announced earlier this month it plans to invest nearly $1 billion in its U.S. factories and supply chain and said it will hire around 5,000 U.S. workers this year.
Global firms on the list included the Japanese tech investment firm SoftBank Group, which has announced plans to invest at least $500 billion to build artificial intelligence-equipped factories in the United States.
Leadership at General Motors and Ford Motor Co. are reassuring employees and investors that the companies are working on how to best navigate the turbulence they foresee coming out of the 25% tariffs Trump imposed on all imported vehicles and most auto parts. The messages to the workforces at both automakers, obtained by the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, said companies are well-positioned to address the uncertainty around the tariffs.
Ford CEO Jim Farley noted in a memo Thursday that nearly 80% of the vehicles Ford sells in America are made in the U.S., but “this does not mean Ford is immune to the impact of tariffs, which could be meaningful.”
Trump, in an interview with NBC on Saturday, said he “couldn’t care less” if automakers raised prices because of tariffs. NBC said that, after the interview, a presidential aide said Trump was referring specifically to foreign car prices.
“The message is congratulations, if you make your car in the United States, you’re going to make a lot of money,” Trump said.
− Jamie L. LaReau, Detroit Free Press
Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested Friday that Ukraine could be placed under a form of temporary administration to allow for new elections and the signature of key accords, which could effectively push out Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump said Sunday that if he and Putin are unable to make a deal to end the war “and if I think it was Russia’s fault … I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia.”
Trump told NBC News he was “pissed off” when Putin criticized the credibility of Zelenskyy’s leadership. Trump said he planned to speak with Putin this week. Trump said the additional secondary tariffs of 25% to 50% on all Russian oil could come within a few weeks.
The result would be that, “If you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States,” Trump said. “There will be a 25% tariff on all oil, a 25- to 50-point tariff on all oil.”
Trump said he still has “a very good relationship” with Putin and that his “anger dissipates quickly … if he (Putin) does the right thing.”
Trump, while serving his first time from 2017-2021, withdrew the U.S. from a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers that placed strict limits on Tehran’s disputed nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump also reimposed sweeping U.S. sanctions. Since then the Islamic Republic has surpassed the agreed limits in its uranium-enrichment program.
On Sunday, Trump threatened Iran with secondary tariffs if Tehran did not come to an agreement with Washington over its nuclear program.
“If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” Trump said in an interview with NBC. “But there’s a chance that if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago.”
Tehran dismissed Trump’s warning. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Sunday ruled out direct negotiations with the Trump administration but indicated that indirect talks were possible.
Contributing: Bart Jansen, USA TODAY; Reuters
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