White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, during a press conference on Thursday, said that President Donald Trump would sign an executive order imposing new tariff rates on trading partners that will take effect Friday.
Leavitt said the signing of the executive order will take place at “some point this afternoon or later this evening.” She said that on August 1, the “reciprocal tariffs will be going into effect.”
Bloomberg wrote:
The tariffs are country-specific rates that the president first announced in April, but paused twice to allow more time for negotiations with dozens of economies. Trump has struck deals with major trading partners, such as the European Union, the UK, Japan and South Korea, and unilaterally set rates on others, including India and Brazil. It’s unclear how many orders Trump will need to sign to enact the new policies.
Plans remain fluid about how the US will handle the many nations that did not reach a tariff agreement with Trump. The president previously said roughly 150 countries would receive a letter imposing blanket duties of around 10% to 15%, but Leavitt stopped short of saying that remained the plan.
Leavitt said,
There’s a lot of countries that I know that have reached out. There are upwards of 200 countries around the world have reached out to the trade and tariff team. Of course, I said previously and the president said, we’re going to prioritize our key trading partners, which we have done, like I have said, of the 18, two-thirds of those we have cut these tailor-made deals with, but I do know that the trade team has been working around the clock to be in correspondence with as many countries as possible.
“The rest of those countries that either do not have a deal or have a letter, they will be hearing from this administration by the midnight deadline tonight,” she noted.
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