The U.S. trade representative announced a wave of tariffs on dozens of economies Thursday to replace President Donald Trump’s temporary 10% tariff, which expired at midnight ET.
Sixty trading partners, including all of America’s most important ones, will face tariffs of 10% to 12.5%, according to a fact sheet. The new duties took effect at 12:01 a.m. ET Friday.
Some of the trading partners facing a 10% tariff include Canada, Mexico, India and the United Kingdom.
The U.K. tariff closely mirrors a deal that Trump and then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer reached last year to lower tariffs on U.K. imports to the U.S. to 10%.
Taiwan and the European Union, which is the largest single U.S. trading partner, will face up to a 12.5% tariff rate. The new rate announced Thursday appears to lower the 15% cap Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed upon last year.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office said it had carried out monthslong investigations into the trading practices of other economies to impose the tariffs. The wave of levies will be enacted under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a different statute from how most tariffs have previously been authorized.
In February, the Supreme Court struck down most of Trump’s tariffs that were imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The court ruled that the Trump administration exceeded its authority.
The administration says that under the statute, it found that the 60 economies have failed “to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.”
Key trading partners, such as the E.U., strongly rejected that accusation.
“You can’t say that for the European Union,” E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told the Reuters news agency on the sidelines of ASEAN meetings in Manila.
“If you compare our labor laws to the ones of the United States, I mean, we have paid vacations, we have very good labor conditions for our employees, so it’s not really grounded,” she added.
Some, however, noted they would make little difference to current levies.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a news release, “The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same.”
Greer’s probe into the 60 trading partners has been ongoing since mid-March, as the administration considered which tariff statute to turn to next.
The new duties include a wide swath of exemptions, including on fertilizers and some types of fuel, both of which are surging in price because of the war in Iran.
Also exempted from the levies are some foods, autos, metals and pharmaceuticals. On Tuesday, Trump separately announced on social media that “all Generic Drugs being brought into the United States will continue to have a TARIFF of ZERO PERCENT for a two year period of time.”
