The White House is narrowing tariffs, but they could still affect imports from Russia - WSJ

The White House is narrowing the tariffs that are scheduled to take effect on April 2. It is no longer expected that tariffs on industrial sectors (automobiles and microchips) will be announced on this date, although major trading partners will still be affected by so-called reciprocal tariffs. In particular, Mexico, Russia, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.

This is written by UNN with a reference to The Wall Street Journal.

Trump announced April 2 as "Liberation Day" for the United States. It is then that the American president is going to introduce the so-called "reciprocal tariffs," which should equalize US tariffs with the duties charged by their trading partners, as well as tariffs on the automotive and pharmaceutical industries.

However, these industry tariffs are unlikely to be announced on April 2, a Trump administration official said. The White House has not responded to a request for comment on when any of these duties will take effect.

The Trump team may put the tariffs into effect almost immediately, on April 2, using extraordinary economic powers, sources said, stressing that final decisions have not yet been made.

In February, a White House official said that a report with reciprocal tariffs could be published on the same day, but implementation would take place later.

According to experts, reciprocal tariffs are now more targeted than initially, although they will still affect countries that account for most of US imports.

The administration is now focusing on applying tariffs to approximately 15% ("dirty 15") of countries with persistent trade imbalances with the United States. Those countries that account for the majority of US foreign trade will be particularly hard hit by higher tariffs.

The target countries are expected to be close to those named by the US Trade Representative in a Federal Register notice last month. These are the G20 countries and Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Vietnam, etc.

While this will hit most of the imports coming into the US, the administration's "dirty 15" approach is still narrower than many observers had anticipated.

Earlier, the White House considered grouping trading partners into three tiers: high, medium and low tariffs, but in recent weeks abandoned this plan in favor of giving each target country an individual tariff number.

Recall

UNN wrote that France wants the EU to consider for the first time the possibility of using its most powerful measure in response to the US if Donald Trump uses tariffs to unfairly force the bloc to change its policies.