US President Donald Trump has unleashed a fresh wave of tariffs targeting dozens of countries. The countries that have been hit in the new wave include Canada and Pakistan. According to a report by the BBC, President Trump raised Canada’s tariff rate from 25 percent to 35 percent in a new executive order that went into effect at midnight August 1.
Trump attributed the 35 percent tariff that he imposed on Canada in part to its ‘inaction’ on the flow of illegal drugs across it’s border with the US. However, the Canadian Bureau of Commerce came out to deny these claims, saying that they were not related to business.
“The White House fact sheet should be called a fact-less sheet when it comes to basing trade decisions about Canada on the fentanyl emergency,” the Canadian Bureau of Commerce chief Candace Laing was quoted by the BBC.
According to a related report on the global Trump tariffs by the CNN, the United States slashed Pakistan’s tariff rate from 29 percent to 19 percent. The CNN further reported that the Trump presidency slapped a universal tariff on all goods going into the United States. This tariff will be 10 percent.
“The White House announced Thursday that the “universal” tariff for goods coming into the United States will remain at 10 percent, the same level that was implemented on April 2. But that 10 percent rate will apply only to countries with which the US has a trade surplus – countries to which the US exports more than it imports,” the CNN reported.
“A 15 percent rate will serve as the new tariff floor for countries with which the US has a trade deficit. About 40 countries will pay that new 15 percent tariff. That tariff will be lower for many of those nations than the April 2 ‘reciprocal’ tariffs, but it will be higher for a handful.”
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The CNN further reported that the new trade policy has also established a 40 percent additional penalty on what have been termed as transshipments, which are are goods that are shipped from a high-tariff country to a low-tariff country and then re-shipped to the US.
