Catenaa, Thursday, July 24, 2025- US President Donald Trump suggested that he would not set the tariffs below 15% for trading partners even after the deadline indicating that the floor for the increased levies was rising.
“We’ll have a straight, simple tariff of anywhere between 15% and 50%,” Trump said Wednesday at an AI summit in Washington. “A couple of, we have 50 because we haven’t been getting along with those countries too well.”
Trump earlier this month said that more than 150 countries would receive a letter including a tariff rate of “probably 10 or 15%, we haven’t decided yet.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS News on Sunday that small countries including “the Latin American countries, the Caribbean countries, many countries in Africa” would have a baseline tariff of 10%. And at the first announcement of the tariffs in April, Trump unveiled a universal tariff of 10% on nearly every country.
On Tuesday, Trump announced he was reducing a threatened 25% tariff on Japan to 15% in exchange for the country removing restrictions on some US products as well as offering to back a $550 billion investment fund.
The White House has also discussed a similar fund with South Korea, a nation also focused on reaching a 15% rate including on autos, Bloomberg reported.
Meantime, officials in Vietnam are weighing the likely cost of their deal. Hanoi estimates its exports to the US could decline by as much as a third if higher tariffs announced by Trump take effect, an internal government assessment shows.
Other nations, including India and members of the European Union, are still pushing for an agreement before the heightened tariffs go into effect.
On Wednesday, Trump said he would “have a very, very simple tariff for some of the countries” because there were so many nations that “you can’t negotiate deals with everyone.” He said talks with the European Union were “serious.”
“If they agree to open up the union to American businesses, then we will let them pay a lower tariff,” Trump said.
