<!–> [!–> <!–> –><!–> [!–> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Mr. Trump’s actions threaten to revive a style of trade brinkmanship that has previously rattled markets, and it will likely result in price increases on American consumers and businesses. Here’s where the tariffs stand.–><!–> –><!–> [–> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> [!–> <!–> –><!–> […] More
President Trump has placed a 20 percent tariff on goods imported from the country, effective Aug. 1.President Trump is set to meet at the White House on Tuesday with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines, who is seeking to leverage his country’s close relationship with the United States to secure a more favorable trade deal.Mr. Trump plans to host Mr. Marcos for lunch. The Trump administration fell well short of its goal of securing 90 trade deals in 90 days by early July, negotiating only a handful. The White House says that it has, so far, reached framework agreements with Britain, Vietnam and Indonesia, plus a trade truce that rolled back tariffs with China.Mr. Trump has threatened higher tariffs on dozens of countries as of Aug. 1, including the Philippines, which he said would receive a 20 percent tariff. Many global leaders have been negotiating with the Trump administration in an effort to lower those tariffs further.Before leaving for the United States, Mr. Marcos said his primary goal was to make sure that trade between the two nations was strong.“My top priority for this visit is to push for greater economic engagement, particularly through trade and investment between the Philippines and the United States,” he said. “I intend to convey to President Trump and his cabinet officials that the Philippines is ready to negotiate a bilateral trade deal that will ensure strong, mutually beneficial and future-oriented collaborations that only the United States and the Philippines will be able to take advantage of.”A statement from the White House said the meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Marcos would focus on a “shared commitment to upholding a free, open, prosperous and secure Indo-Pacific and advancing shared economic prosperity.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The Trump administration has dialed back aggressive measures against China and reversed its position on technology controls as the president angles for a Chinese trip later this year.In recent years, one of China’s biggest requests of American officials has been that the United States relax its strict controls on advanced artificial intelligence chips, measures that were put in place to slow Beijing’s technological and military gains.Last week, the Trump administration did just that, as it allowed the world’s leader in A.I. chips, the U.S.-based Nvidia, to begin selling a lower-level but still coveted chip known as H20 to China.The move was a dramatic reversal from three months ago, when President Trump himself banned China from accessing the H20, while also imposing triple-digit tariffs on Beijing. That set off an economically perilous trade clash, as China retaliated by clamping down on exports of minerals and magnets that are critical to American factories, including automakers and defense manufacturers.China’s decision to cut off access to those materials upended the dynamic between the world’s largest economies. The Trump administration, which came into office determined to bully China into changing its trade behavior with punishing tariffs, appeared to realize the perils of that approach. Now, the administration has resorted to trying to woo China instead.Officials throughout the government say the Trump administration is putting more aggressive actions on China on hold, while pushing forward with moves that the Chinese will perceive positively. That includes the reversal on the H20 chip.The H20 decision was primarily motivated by top Trump officials who agreed with Nvidia’s arguments that selling the chip would be better for American technology leadership than withholding it, people familiar with the move say.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
President Trump said the agreement would partly walk back some of the steep tariffs he threatened on the country last week. Indonesia’s president called Mr. Trump a “tough negotiator.”Indonesia’s president, Prabowo Subianto, confirmed on Wednesday the broad outlines of a trade agreement with the United States that was reached after what he called “tough negotiations” with Washington.Under the terms, which President Trump on Tuesday called a “great deal for everybody,” U.S. exports to Indonesia would face no tariffs, while Indonesian goods would be charged a tariff of 19 percent in the United States.Mr. Prabowo confirmed in brief remarks in Jakarta that the two nations had “finally” reached an agreement. “We understand their interests, and they understand ours,” he added.The announcement comes as the Trump administration is trying to close trade deals with numerous countries, and threatening to impose double-digit tariffs on the exports of two dozen nations as of Aug. 1 if agreements aren’t reached.U.S. and Indonesian officials have been engaged in trade talks for several months. Last week, Mr. Trump threatened Indonesia with a 32 percent tariff on its exports in a letter posted to his social media account, as he sent similar form letters to dozens of countries. Indonesian officials said they were surprised to receive the letter, given that talks had been going well.“I think it’s a good deal for both parties,” Mr. Trump said, while saying that a forthcoming deal with India would also follow similar lines. He added that Indonesia also had minerals and “very high-quality copper, which we’ll be using.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The Trump administration is adding a 17 percent tariff to a year-round grocery store staple, while funneling more business to domestic tomato growers, largely in Florida.The Trump administration announced Monday that it would impose a 17 percent tariff on most imports of tomatoes from Mexico, as it withdrew from a decades-old trade agreement that had prevented those levies from snapping into place.The tariffs will add to the price of a year-round grocery store staple for many Americans, while funneling more business to domestic tomato growers, largely in Florida.The levies stem from a nearly 30-year-old trade case that found Mexican tomato growers to be selling their products in the United States at unfairly low prices. The U.S. tomato industry brought a case against their Mexican competitors in 1996, arguing that Mexican tomatoes dumped into the United States were injuring American growers. A U.S. trade court agreed with them, and ordered tariffs to be imposed.But on five occasions since then — in 1996, 2002, 2008, 2013 and 2019 — the United States agreed to suspend the tariffs, as long as Mexican growers would keep their prices above a certain minimum level. The United States and Mexico had been in recent talks about entering into a new agreement.“Mexico remains one of our greatest allies, but for far too long our farmers have been crushed by unfair trade practices that undercut pricing on produce like tomatoes,” Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, said in a statement. “That ends today. This rule change is in line with President Trump’s trade policies and approach with Mexico.”The 17 percent duty is calculated to measure the percentage by which Mexican tomatoes have been sold in the United States at unfair prices, the Commerce Department said. The United States imported $2.8 billion of tomatoes from Mexico in 2023, according to data from the World Bank, representing more than 85 percent of American imports.The Fresh Produce Association of the Americas, which represents companies that import and sell produce and flowers, said it was “disappointed” in the decision. It said that its members distributed vine-ripened, greenhouse-grown tomatoes from Mexico that are not replaceable by tomatoes grown in Florida and the Southeast, most of which are grown in an open field, picked green and gassed to induce a color change.“As an industry, we are saddened that American consumers will have to pay a tomato tax, or duty, for a reduced selection of the tomatoes they prefer,” the group said.Robert Guenther, the executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Exchange, said that the previous five agreements with Mexico had failed, and that strong enforcement of U.S. trade laws was needed to protect “the stability of our food supply chain.”“This decision will protect hardworking American tomato growers from unfair Mexican trading practices and send a strong signal that the Trump administration is committed to ensuring fair markets for American agriculture,” he said. More
The president’s tariff announcements suggest he has not backed away from his initial strategy, where even smaller trading partners will face tariffs.President Trump added on Wednesday to his growing list of countries that would face steep tariffs in the coming weeks if they fail to reach trade agreements with the United States, as he threatens to drag nations large and small into his trade war.On his social media account, the president posted form letters informing countries — including the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Moldova, Brunei, Libya, Iraq and Algeria — that they should prepare for double-digit tariff rates. Except for the name of the country and the tariff rate, the letters were identical to those he posted on Monday, which targeted 14 nations.Later Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trump issued another threat to impose a 50 percent tariff on products from Brazil. His letter implied that the higher rate was partly in response to what Mr. Trump described as a “witch hunt” against former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for attempting a coup.Brazil and the other trading partners that Mr. Trump targeted Wednesday join a growing list of countries that will face additional tariffs Aug. 1, including Japan and South Korea. The president’s renewed threats against both large and small trading partners suggests that he is hewing to a global tariff strategy he announced in early April that punishes countries broadly for a variety of trading practices and policies he has deemed unfair.In issuing his threat to Brazil, which was more sharply worded than the previous form letters, Mr. Trump cited the country’s “insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans (as lately illustrated by the Brazilian Supreme Court, which has issued hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to U.S. Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from the Brazilian Social Media market).”As part of his attack, Mr. Trump also directed his trade representative, Jamieson Greer, to begin investigating Brazil’s digital trade policies, which could result in further tariffs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Instead of treating tariffs as part of a broader trade policy, President Trump views them as a valuable weapon he can wield on the world stage.President Trump’s allies often describe him as a 40-year devotee of tariffs who, stymied by his first-term advisers, is finally able to put his long-held economic theory into practice.But while Mr. Trump spoke about tariffs off and on before becoming a presidential candidate, he usually described his broader grievance about trade in terms of other countries or companies “ripping off” the United States. It is since Mr. Trump became a candidate in 2015 that he has talked about tariffs in earnest, describing them as a tool that he could easily deploy to rebalance the country’s economic footing.“We are going to have 10 percent to 20 percent tariffs on foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years, we are going to charge them 10 percent to 20 percent to come in and take advantage of our country because that is what they have been doing,” Mr. Trump said in August 2024, one of many comments he made in that race emphasizing he would impose sweeping tariffs if he won, far beyond those in his first term.Mr. Trump’s latest retreat this week from his own self-imposed tariff deadlines underscores the challenge he has faced in treating tariffs as a quick-fix — a tool that he asserts will bring in lots of money for the country while swiftly resetting trade relationships.A review of Mr. Trump’s comments about tariffs over the decades shows he has often been fairly vague on the topic, and only more recently came to describe them as the centerpiece of his approach to trade.Far more frequent and durable has been Mr. Trump’s repeated refrain that other countries are turning the United States into “suckers.” His references to tariffs often came as part of his description of a feeling of national injury that became common as the country’s manufacturing base began eroding. That attentiveness to trade as an issue, even absent a cohesive policy plan, helped Mr. Trump win in 2016.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The president is deploying the word “deal” liberally, using the term to describe all kinds of trade arrangements, some very limited or one-sided.The Trump administration is seeking “deals” with countries around the globe, telling major trading partners that it is open for negotiations before higher tariffs kick in on Aug. 1.But what constitutes a trade deal these days has become a tricky question. For the president, a trade deal seems to be pretty much anything he wants it to be.While traditional trade deals run into the hundreds of pages and take years to negotiate, Mr. Trump and his advisers have been using the term to refer to much more limited arrangements. That includes the framework deal announced with Britain in May, which was only a few pages long and included many promises that still need to be negotiated.The president also used the “trade deal” term for the handshake agreement announced with Vietnam last week. In a post on Truth Social, he said it would be “a Great Deal of Cooperation between our two Countries” and bring some tariffs on Vietnamese products down to 20 percent. But since then, neither country has yet publicly released any text or fact sheets describing what has actually been agreed upon.The president has also recently taken to referring to the trade truce his officials made with China in June as a “trade deal,” even though the agreement constituted only an agreement by the two governments to roll back the tariffs and other retaliatory measures they had taken against each other in recent months. A trade deal typically makes changes to the rules of trade — but this truce just returned the relationship to the status quo.In a cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Trump also used the term “deal” to refer to one-sided arrangements that other countries had not consented to at all: the letters that he has been sending via his social media account informing governments of new tariff rates on their exports.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
A small company in northern Mexico had faced steep competition from China in making straps, plugs, fasteners, grommets, zip ties and clamps. Now, U.S. tariffs have driven a spike in his business.Jorge H. Martínez, the owner of a small Mexican company near the U.S. border, has seen how President Trump’s threats of steep tariffs have upended markets, bent geopolitics and thrown businesses into uncertainty.He’s thrilled about it.As much of Mexico’s business world worried over the nightmare outcomes that tariffs could cause, Mr. Martínez saw an opportunity.“In a crisis, if you’re prepared, you win,” Mr. Martínez, 40, said as he sat in his office above the hum and clank of machines spitting out tiny plastic parts by the dozen. “Truth is, this whole thing benefited us.”He is the chief executive of Micro Partes, which has about 50 employees in the industrial city of Monterrey. They create a tiny universe of straps, plugs, fasteners, grommets, zip ties and clamps — objects that are critical to many production lines but that most people don’t give a second thought to, if they notice them at all. The products include a hollow ring to protect cables as they pass through walls, a lid to cover the heads of the washing-machine screws, and buttons to hold advertisements on shopping carts.Some of the parts that Micro Partes makes. The company used to compete with Chinese suppliers that sold similar products at low prices.Mr. Martínez has long faced steep competition from China, where many of these parts are made cheaply.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
