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The White House says businesses shouldn’t worry if President Donald Trump’s tariffs go into effect on Friday.
“I would think that it’s not the end of the world if these snapback tariffs are on for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, as long as the countries are moving forward and trying to negotiate in good faith,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday on CNBC.
Trump and his trade team have said that August 1 is the final deadline for countries to reach an agreement with the US. Otherwise, the White House will unilaterally impose a new rate, a reality that Bessent said would make the president “equally as happy.”
“I think, for President Trump, the — for me, what’s given us a lot of negotiating leverage is, he’s happy to do the deal, but he’s equally as happy, sometimes in more cases — in some cases, more happy just to have the tariff income,” Bessent said.
Major US trading partners — including Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and India — still haven’t reached an agreement. Trump has threatened to impose a 50% tariff on Brazil if authorities don’t end the trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Separately, Trump has sent letters informing roughly two dozen nations of the rate the US will impose if a deal isn’t reached. Some of those rates differ from the original ones Trump announced when he rolled out his so-called reciprocal tariffs in April.
Earlier on Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that deals with the rest of the world will be done by Trump’s deadline. The only exception will be for China, where talks have proceeded on a different timeline.
“For the rest of the world, we’re going to have things done by Friday. And Friday is not that far away,” Lutnick said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” ‘So you should expect, we said August 1st is the date that we’re setting all these rates, and they are off to the races after that.”
Trump said before July 9 that he was reluctant to delay the tariffs further. He later did so, setting up the August 1 cutoff.
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