US President Donald Trump has unveiled his long-awaited “reciprocal” tariff plan, slapping trading partners with additional levies but initially exempting steel from the new nation-specific measures, Kallanish confirms.

Trump on Wednesday instituted a new global 10% tariff on all US imports and confirmed his previously announced 25% tariff on all auto imports (see Kallanish 26 March). The 10% blanket tariff takes effect Saturday. Reciprocal tariffs begin 9 April.

Customised reciprocal tariffs, meant to offset equivalent measures against US exports, are on top of prior levies and duties. Trump's executive order, signed Wednesday, specifically exempts steel imports and also goods from Mexico and Canada, all of which were subject to earlier, separate tariff regimes (see Kallanish passim).

The exemption for steel is notable, because the world’s leading steel exporters are among the hardest-hit on their national reciprocal tariff rates. Vietnam is assigned a US reciprocal tariff of 46%, China is charged 34%, Taiwan is assessed at 32%, India is at 26%, South Korea 25%, Japan 24% and the EU 20%. Turkish and Brazilian exports received a lower reciprocal tariff, each at 10%.

In a speech at the White House, Trump promised that the reciprocal tariffs and his other trade measures will spur the greatest national transformation in the history of the world. He said the combined impact will catalyse a renaissance in US manufacturing, boosting segments ranging from auto and motorcycle production and energy infrastructure to shipbuilding and high-tech construction.

Trump is instituting the new tariffs under a rationale that the US trade deficit poses a national security emergency.

“Foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories,” the president contends. “It is not going to happen anymore. … We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.”

Regarding reciprocal tariffs, Trump earlier had promised that the US would add up all of a trading partner’s tariffs, non-tariff barriers and value-added taxes on US exports, plus other factors such as alleged currency manipulation, stolen intellectual property and pollution impacts (see Kallanish 14 February). The US then would charge new levies on that country’s exports equal to the combined cost of the above. However, in explaining the methodology on Wednesday, the president said the reciprocal tariff rates represent only half of the calculated combined cost.

A White House fact sheet states that Canada and Mexico eventually may be subject to 12% reciprocal tariffs on goods not in compliance with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Trump added a message for foreign nations’ leaders who intend to contact him to ask for a break on the reciprocal tariffs: Remove your own tariffs against US exports, drop other barriers and “start buying tens of billions of dollars of American goods.”