US customs agents yesterday began collecting US President Donald Trump’s unilateral 10 percent tariff on all imports from many countries, with higher levies on goods from 57 larger trading partners due to start next week.
The initial 10 percent “baseline” tariff took effect at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses at 12:01am, ushering in Trump’s full rejection of the post-World War II system of mutually agreed tariff rates.
“This is the single biggest trade action of our lifetime,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, a trade lawyer at Hogan Lovells and former White House trade adviser during Trump’s first term.
Photo: Bloomberg
Shaw told a Brookings Institution event on Thursday that she expected the tariffs to evolve as countries seek to negotiate lower rates.
“But this is huge. This is a pretty seismic and significant shift in the way that we trade with every country on Earth,” she added.
Trump’s Wednesday tariff announcement shook global stock markets to their core, wiping out US$5 trillion in stock market value for S&P 500 companies by Friday’s close, a record two-day decline. Prices for oil and commodities plunged, while investors fled to the safety of government bonds.
Among the countries first hit with the 10 percent tariff are Australia, Colombia, Argentina, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UK. A US Customs and Border Protection bulletin to shippers indicates no grace period for cargoes on the water at midnight yesterday.
At midnight on Wednesday, Trump’s “reciprocal” tariff rates of 11 percent to 50 percent are due to take effect, hitting Taiwanese goods with a 32 percent tariff and EU imports with a 20 percent tariff, while Chinese goods would be hit with a 34 percent tariff, bringing Trump’s total new levies on China to 54 percent.
China yesterday said “the market has spoken” in rejecting Trump’s tariffs, and called on Washington for “equal-footed consultation.”
Several Chinese commerce associations in industries from healthcare and textiles to electronics also issued statements yesterday calling for unity in exploring alternative markets and saying the tariffs would worsen inflation in the US.
“The market has spoken,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) wrote on Facebook, alongside a picture capturing Friday’s falls on US markets.
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