{"id":113570,"date":"2025-08-02T17:50:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T17:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/113570\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T17:50:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T17:50:14","slug":"from-laos-to-brazil-trumps-tariffs-leave-a-lot-of-losers-but-even-the-winners-will-pay-a-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/113570\/","title":{"rendered":"From Laos to Brazil, Trump’s tariffs leave a lot of losers. But even the winners will pay a price"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump\u2019s tariff onslaught this week<\/a> left a lot of losers \u2013 from small, poor countries like Laos and Algeria to wealthy U.S. trading partners like Canada and Switzerland. They\u2019re now facing especially hefty taxes \u2013 tariffs \u2013 on the products they export to the United States starting Aug. 7.<\/p>\n

The closest thing to winners may be the countries that caved to Trump\u2019s demands \u2014 and avoided even more pain. But it\u2019s unclear whether anyone will be able to claim victory in the long run \u2014 even the United States, the intended beneficiary of Trump\u2019s protectionist policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many respects, everybody\u2019s a loser here,\u2019\u2019 said Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at the New York Law School.<\/p>\n

Barely six months after he returned to the White House, Trump has demolished the old global economic order. Gone is one built on agreed-upon rules. In its place is a system in which Trump himself sets the rules<\/a>, using America\u2019s enormous economic power to punish countries that won\u2019t agree to one-sided trade deals and extracting huge concessions from the ones that do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest winner is Trump,\u201d said Alan Wolff, a former U.S. trade official and deputy director-general at the World Trade Organization. \u201cHe bet that he could get other countries to the table on the basis of threats, and he succeeded \u2013 dramatically.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Everything goes back to what Trump calls \u201cLiberation Day\u2019\u2019<\/a> \u2013 April 2 \u2013 when the president announced \u201creciprocal\u2019\u2019 taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and 10% \u201cbaseline\u2019\u2019 taxes on almost everyone else.<\/p>\n

He invoked a 1977 law<\/a> to declare the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his sweeping import taxes. That allowed him to bypass Congress, which traditionally has had authority over taxes, including tariffs \u2014 all of which is now being challenged in court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Winners will still pay higher tariffs than before Trump took office<\/p>\n

Trump retreated temporarily after his Liberation Day announcement triggered a rout in financial markets<\/a> and suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate.<\/p>\n

Eventually, some of them did, caving to Trump\u2019s demands to pay what four months ago would have seemed unthinkably high tariffs for the privilege of continuing to sell into the vast American market.<\/p>\n

The United Kingdom<\/a> agreed to 10% tariffs on its exports to the United States \u2014 up from 1.3% before Trump amped up his trade war with the world. The U.S. demanded concessions even though it had run a trade surplus, not a deficit, with the UK for 19 straight years.<\/p>\n

The European Union<\/a> and Japan<\/a> accepted U.S. tariffs of 15%. Those are much higher than the low single-digit rates they paid last year \u2014 but lower than the tariffs he was threatening (30% on the EU and 25% on Japan).<\/p>\n

Also cutting deals with Trump and agreeing to hefty tariffs<\/a> were Pakistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.<\/p>\n

Even countries that saw their tariffs lowered from April without reaching a deal are still paying much higher tariffs than before Trump took office. Angola\u2019s tariff, for instance, dropped to 15% from 32% in April, but in 2022 it was less than 1.5%. And while Trump administration cut Taiwan\u2019s tariff to 20% from 32% in April, the pain will still be felt. <\/p>\n

\u201c20% from the beginning has not been our goal, we hope that in further negotiations we will get a more beneficial and more reasonable tax rate,\u201d Taiwan\u2019s president Lai Ching-te told reporters in Taipei Friday.<\/p>\n

Trump also agreed to reduce the tariff on the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho to 15% from the 50% he\u2019d announced in April, but the damage may already have been done there.<\/a><\/p>\n

Bashing Brazil, clobbering Canada, shellacking the Swiss<\/p>\n

Countries that didn\u2019t knuckle under \u2014 and those that found other ways to incur Trump\u2019s wrath \u2014 got hit harder. <\/p>\n

Even some poorer countries were not spared. Laos\u2019 annual economic output comes to $2,100 per person and Algeria\u2019s $5,600 \u2014 versus America\u2019s $75,000. Nonetheless, Laos got rocked with a 40% tariff and Algeria with a 30% levy. <\/p>\n

Trump slammed Brazil with a 50% import tax<\/a> largely because he didn\u2019t like the way it was treating former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro<\/a>, who is facing trial for trying to lose his electoral defeat in 2022. Never mind that the U.S. has exported more to Brazil than it\u2019s imported every year since 2007.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s decision to plaster a 35% tariff on longstanding U.S. ally Canada<\/a> was partly designed to threaten Ottawa for saying it would recognize a Palestinian state<\/a>. Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. <\/p>\n

Switzerland was clobbered with a 39% import tax<\/a> \u2014 even higher than the 31% Trump originally announced on April 2. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Swiss probably wish that they had camped in Washington\u2019\u2019 to make a deal, said Wolff, now senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. \u201cThey\u2019re clearly not at all happy.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Fortunes may change if Trump\u2019s tariffs are upended in court. Five American businesses and 12 states are suing the president, arguing that his Liberation Day tariffs exceeded his authority under the 1977 law.<\/p>\n

In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade<\/a>, a specialized court in New York, agreed and blocked the tariffs, although the government was allowed to continue collecting them while its appeal wend its way through the legal system, and may likely end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. In a hearing Thursday, the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sounded skeptical about Trump\u2019s justifications for the tariffs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf (the tariffs) get struck down, then maybe Brazil\u2019s a winner and not a loser,\u2019\u2019 Appleton said. <\/p>\n

Paying more for knapsacks and video games<\/p>\n

Trump portrays his tariffs as a tax on foreign countries. But they are actually paid by import companies in the U.S. who try to pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. True, tariffs can hurt other countries by forcing their exporters to cut prices and sacrifice profits \u2014 or risk losing market share in the United States. <\/p>\n

But economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that overseas exporters have absorbed just one-fifth of the rising costs from tariffs, while Americans and U.S. businesses have picked up the most of the tab.<\/p>\n

Walmart<\/a>, Procter & Gamble<\/a>, Ford, Best Buy, Adidas, Nike, Mattel and Stanley Black & Decker, have all hiked prices due to U.S. tariffs <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a consumption tax, so it disproportionately affects those who have lower incomes,\u2019’ Appleton said. \u201cSneakers, knapsacks … your appliances are going to go up. Your TV and electronics are going to go up. Your video game devices, consoles are going to up because none of those are made in America.\u2019\u2019 <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s trade war has pushed the average U.S. tariff from 2.5% at the start of 2025 to 18.3% now, the highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. And that will impose a $2,400 cost on the average household, the lab estimates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. consumer\u2019s a big loser,\u2033 Wolff said.<\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump\u2019s tariff onslaught this week left a lot of losers \u2013 from small,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":113571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[28957,71550,3881,13214,372,37055,4214,64,1613,69,8697,9234,57,59,13790,3462,39155,27690,1612,69946,50,2983,80,8110,4217,71549,16618,20862,61,370,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-113570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-adidas-ag","9":"tag-alan-wolff","10":"tag-ap-top-news","11":"tag-asia-pacific","12":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","13":"tag-best-buy-co","14":"tag-brazil","15":"tag-business","16":"tag-central-america","17":"tag-donald-trump","18":"tag-european-union","19":"tag-ford-motor-co","20":"tag-general-news","21":"tag-inc","22":"tag-international-trade","23":"tag-israel-government","24":"tag-jair-bolsonaro","25":"tag-laos","26":"tag-latin-america","27":"tag-mattel","28":"tag-news","29":"tag-nike","30":"tag-politics","31":"tag-procter-gamble-co","32":"tag-south-america","33":"tag-stanley-black-decker","34":"tag-tariffs-and-global-trade","35":"tag-the-goldman-sachs-group","36":"tag-u-s-news","37":"tag-united-states-government","38":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}