Trump issues order imposing new global tariff rates effective Aug. 7

President Donald Trump signed executive orders on Thursday evening to impose tariffs of between 15 and 41 percent on goods shipped to the U.S. from more than 67 countries, ratcheting up tariffs to the highest levels in more than a century.

The new duties, however, won’t go into effect until Aug. 7 — giving countries yet another window to try to negotiate them down.

“This is historic, this is a new system of trade,” said a senior administration official, granted anonymity as part of the terms of a call. “It’s what I would call the Trump round of negotiations.”

According to the text of the first order, the Trump administration is maintaining its 10 percent so-called baseline tariff on countries where the U.S. has a trade surplus — i.e. it sells more American products to those countries than it imports from them. And it officially imposes the 15 percent rate that Trump agreed to set as part of negotiations with leading trading partners like the European Union, Japan and South Korea. The Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia also reached tentative agreements with the administration that set their duties at 19-20 percent.

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