Another deadline passed on Wednesday without President Donald Trump following through on his threats to impose new tariffs. It was 90 days ago that Trump had announced an abrupt pause in his plan to levy new tariffs on countries around the world. Trump and his team predicted it would use that time to ink new, more favorable trade deals with many of the countries’ biggest trading partners. He’s so far only announced trade deals with two countries—the UK and Vietnam.
Instead on Wednesday, Trump continued to threaten countries with higher tariffs in the near future by publishing open letters to the Philippines, Brunei, Moldova, Algeria, Iraq, Libya and Sri Lanka that set new tariff rates ranging from 20% to 30% that he said he would impose on Aug. 1.
Asked on Wednesday how he chose the tariff rates, Trump said he was using “a formula based on common sense, based on deficits, based on how we were treated over the years.” He said he wants foreign companies to have to sell their goods with the tariffs or to build factories inside the U.S. Economists warn that tariffs would increase the price of goods in the U.S.
Yet Trump’s commitment to his tariffs remains hard to pin down. During a meeting at the White House on Wednesday with the leaders of the West African countries of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal, a reporter asked Trump if those countries would face tariffs as well. “I haven’t thought of it. But maybe, I don’t know. Let’s see, I like him, him, him, him, and him. No, I don’t think so. Not too much, very good. These are friends of mine now.”
Trump’s decision to punt the tariff deadline to August has raised questions about whether he will follow through with imposing the tariffs or delay again. During a Rose Garden ceremony in April, Trump announced a sweeping new tariff regime that sent markets in a tailspin. Day later, he announced his 90-day pause.
The erratic roll out of Trump’s trade policy has introduced new uncertainty into U.S. business decisions. Trump officially punted his tariff deadline to Aug. 1 in an executive order on Monday. He also notified Japan and South Korea in letters marked with his distinctive jagged signature that products from their countries sold in the U.S. would carry a 25% surcharge beginning next month. “A letter means a deal,” Trump said in a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. He said that the U.S. can’t meet with 200 countries and decided to “do it in a more general way.”
The new batch of letters were first posted to Truth Social, the social media site Trump owns. For most of his second term, Trump’s account on the site was publicly available. On Wednesday, visitors to the Truth Social website were prompted to create an account before being able to see Trump’s posts. After the notices appeared on Truth Social, they were also published on X. In an email to TIME, White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai said that all of the documents posted on Trump’s TruthSocial account were also being posted on X by the White House’s “rapid response handle,” but “with a delay.”
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