- A list of new tariffs to be announced on April 2 are likely to be less sweeping than earlier expectations.
- President Trump declared new tariffs on Venezuelan oil and gas customers in response to immigration issues.
- The tariff tumult has led to uncertainty in U.S the business sector and dragged down investment markets.
Administration officials are signaling that President Donald Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement, which was earlier anticipated to be a sweeping global decree, is more likely to target a group of the most significant U.S. international trade partners.
A new round of sector-specific tariffs that were also expected to be unveiled on that date, which Trump has labeled “Liberation Day,” are likely to be delayed, according to recent comments from presidential aides.
Trump officials publicly acknowledged in recent days that the list of target countries may not be universal, and that other existing tariffs, like on steel, may not necessarily be cumulative, which would substantially lower the tariff hit to those sectors, per a report from Bloomberg. That includes comments from Trump himself, who has increasingly focused his remarks on the reciprocal measures.
But while Trump staffers are signaling that the April 2 unveiling of new levies on imported goods will be somewhat lighter than anticipated, the president himself is still sounding bullish on the coming decree.
“April 2nd is going to be liberation day for America,” Trump said on Friday from the Oval Office. “We’ve been ripped off by every country in the world, friend and foe.”
New tariff aimed a Venezuelan petroleum
New tariff threats emerged Monday via a Trump posting on Truth Social. The president announced that, as of April 2, countries that buy petroleum products from Venezuela will face a new 25% tariff on trade products headed for the U.S.
In the social media post, Trump said the new trade decree is in response to Venezuela’s policy of “purposefully and deceitfully” sending tens of thousands of Venezuelan criminals and gang members to the U.S.
“Therefore, any Country that purchases Oil and/or Gas from Venezuela will be forced to pay a Tariff of 25% to the United States on any Trade they do with our Country,” Trump wrote. “All documentation will be signed and registered, and the Tariff will take place on April 2nd, 2025, LIBERATION DAY IN AMERICA.”
Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business that 15% of countries are the biggest offenders when it comes to trade tariff imbalances but that group represents the biggest share of U.S. import goods.
“It’s 15% of the countries, but it’s a huge amount of our trading volume,” Bessent said. “And then there’s what we would call kind of, ‘the dirty 15,’ and they have substantial tariffs,” he added, pointing out that “as important as a tariff or some of these non-tariff barriers” are, where they do testing or have domestic production “bear no resemblance to safety or anything that we do to their products.”
The Trump tariff trail
Trump has variously announced and rescinded a number of new tariff policies in recent weeks, actions that led to widespread uncertainty for U.S. businesses and losses in U.S. investment markets.
Those actions have included:
- March 3 — Trump announced that a 30-day pause on 25% tariffs targeting goods from Canada and Mexico, first revealed last month, would end on Tuesday.
- Also on March 3, Trump ordered an additional round of 10% tariffs on goods from China, adding to the 10% levy the U.S. imposed last month.
- March 5 — Trump circled back with a temporary carveout on his tariff declarations, announcing a new 30-day pause that applied just to automobile industry imports from Canada and Mexico.
- March 6 — The president followed up by signing a pair of executive orders for selective moratoriums on new tariffs for Mexican and Canadian goods, set to time out on April 2. The latest orders essentially revert trade rules back to the previous guidance under the 2018 U.S.-Canada-Mexico Agreement, a trade pact Trump signed during his first term in office.
- March 7 — Trump added yet another tariff twist, indicating he may issue new levies on certain Canadian products, including a 250% tariff on dairy, a rate he said matches a current Canadian tariff on U.S. dairy imports. “Canada has been ripping us off for years on tariffs for lumber and for dairy products,” he said. Earlier on Friday, the president said he was “strongly considering” imposing new sanctions on Russia, including trade tariffs, until a ceasefire agreement is reached with Ukraine.
- March 12 — Trump announced a new 25% tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum he said was in retaliation to a 25% Canadian energy tariff on electricity exports to the U.S. Later that day, following Canada’s move to pull back on the new energy tariff, Trump delayed the steel and aluminum levy.
- March 24 — Trump announced new 25% tariffs on import goods from countries that purchase Venezuelan oil and gas in response to Venezuelan immigration issues.
Tariff teeter-totter causes businesses turmoil
Earlier this month, the vice chair of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Council offered some insight into how the uncertainty born of on-again, off-again trade policies is throwing U.S. businesses into turmoil.
“My company will feel an immediate, detrimental impact as a result of these tariffs,” Traci Tapani, co-president of Wyoming Machine, a sheet metal fabricator in Minnesota that relies on aluminum imported from Canada, said in a U.S. Chamber release. “The threats and uncertainty have made it hard to make business decisions, and these kinds of tariffs will make it extremely difficult for small businesses like mine to grow.”
Utah business operators find themselves squarely in the fallout zone of the trade policy tumult thanks to the state’s role as an outsize player in U.S. international trade with some $37 billion in annual import/export volume.
According to a report published last year by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, Utah companies produced $17.4 billion worth of international exports in 2023 that generated over $4 billion in earnings and directly supported nearly 72,000 jobs. That volume contributed over $8 billion to the state’s gross domestic product and $16.7 billion to the state’s gross output. The state exported goods to 200 countries and imported goods from 151 countries.