President Donald Trump announced tariffs of up to 30% against six additional countries Wednesday morning.
The tariffs will take effect Aug. 1, according to letters from the president. Originally he announced the tariffs on April 2, but then postponed them until July 9 to give countries more time to negotiate.
The president signed an executive order Monday pushing back implementation of reciprocal tariffs until Aug. 1, and is in the process of sending individual letters to all the countries officially notifying them of the proposed tariffs.
Trump announced 20% tariffs on products from the Philippines; 25% for products from Brunei and Moldova; and 30% for products from Algeria, Iraq and Libya that are sold in the United States.
In each letter announcing the tariffs, the president said he is leaving open the possibility to increase tariffs by whatever percentage the country enacts in reciprocal tariffs against the U.S.
“If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by will be added onto the [percentage] we charge,” Trump wrote.
During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the president said the letters sent to country leaders are deals. He said making individual deals with countries is “too time consuming.”
“We’ve got 200 countries, we can’t meet with 200 countries,” Trump said.
“In every case, I’m treating them better than they treated us over the years,” the president added. “I could have been much harsher, I don’t want to do that.”
Trump affirmed that the deals are primarily his idea. He said he worked to collaborate with Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick, secretaries of the treasury and commerce, respectively.
“The deals are mostly my deal to them,” Trump said. “We’re picking a number that’s low, we don’t want to hurt them, and [be] fair.”
Trump still left open the possibility to further negotiate trade deals with other countries “over the years.”
The president also launched criticism at the BRICS bloc of nations and reaffirmed a 10% tariff against member countries.
“BRICS was set up to hurt us; BRICS was set up to degenerate our dollar and take it off as the standard,” Trump said.
“Almost every country charges us tariffs; we had deficits with everybody for years, for decades,” Trump added. “We were like this big monolith that made bad deals with everybody.”
Trump said he negotiated with South Korea during his first term over American military involvement in the country. He said conversations made progress but fizzled out after his first term ended.
“Our country was the wealthiest from 1870 to 1913; it was an all tariff country,” Trump said. “We had so much money we didn’t know what to do with it.”
He sent a letter establishing a 25% tariff against the nation on Monday.
Trump said countries that he is negotiating trade deals with now are willing to offer the U.S. free market access.
“They’re giving us total access to their countries,” Trump said. “It’s about time the United States of America starts collecting money from countries that were ripping us off and laughing behind our back at how stupid we were.”
