Donald Trump released another round of letters to trade partners Wednesday that didn’t include updates on negotiated deals but offered new threats of rates ranging from 20% to 30% on nations from the Philippines to Moldova set to take effect on Aug. 1.
The entire list of seven letters released Wednesday so far includes 30% rates for Algeria, Iraq, Libya, and Sri Lanka; 25% rates for Brunei and Moldova; and a 20% rate for the Philippines.
The list focused on lower-level trading partners. The Philippines was the biggest announcement Wednesday, but that nation ranks about 30th in US trading partners by value, according to US government data.
The rates continued a trend of announcements this week of rates that largely tracked what was first announced in April, with some alterations.
The Philippines, for example, saw its proposed rate jump slightly from 17% to 20%. Moldova saw a decrease from 31% to 25% and Algeria saw their rate unchanged at 30%.
President Trump was also asked Wednesday how he came to his new tariff rates with the president responding it “was a formula based on common sense, based on deficits, based on how we’ve been treated over the years, and based on raw numbers.”
In April, Trump came up with his tariff rates purely based on trade deficits.
The president Wednesday afternoon also teased additional letters, including one for Brazil, that could come later today or tomorrow morning.
This latest flurry of pronouncements comes on top of 14 letters issued Monday and during a week that has seen a surge in bellicose new rhetoric from the president including the announcement of new 50% tariffs on copper.
But markets have largely ignored the news after one of the first moves from the president this week was to push ahead his “reciprocal” tariff deadlines by about three weeks via executive action.
“Trade negotiations take time, and the notion you’re going to be simultaneously negotiating with dozens of countries just really limits the bandwidth of the negotiating teams,” Wendy Cutler, a former trade negotiator currently at the Asia Society, said in a live Yahoo Finance appearance Wednesday.
“Aug. 1 now is the next deadline,” she added, “and even though the president is saying there’ll be no more further extensions, I think our trading partners are beginning to realize that this may go on and on and on.”
Read more: The latest news and updates on Trump’s tariffs
Also damping the potential effect was that Wednesday’s series of letters — which appeared in sequence on Truth Social starting a little after 11:30 a.m. ET — lacked any signs of progress on deals with India and the EU, as arrangements with two of the US’s major trading partners remain outstanding.
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