United States President Donald Trump has announced steep new tariffs on pharmaceutical products, big-rig trucks, and home renovation fixtures and furniture.
The announcement late on Thursday signalled the harshest trade plans from Trump since last April’s shock unveiling of reciprocal tariffs on virtually every US trading partner across the globe, marking a revival of the Republican president’s trade war.
Starting on October 1, “we will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any branded or patented Pharmaceutical Product, unless a Company IS BUILDING their Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plant in America,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Shares of pharmaceutical companies across Asia with big exposure to the US market fell on Friday, including South Korea’s Samsung Biologics.
Trump’s move was criticised by Australia, which exported pharmaceutical products worth an estimated $1.3bn to the US in 2024, according to the United Nations Comtrade Database.
In a separate post, Trump wrote of a 25 percent tariff on “all ‘Heavy (Big) Trucks’ made in other parts of the world” to support US manufacturers such as “Peterbilt, Kenworth, Freightliner, Mack Trucks and others”.
Foreign companies that compete with these manufacturers in the US market include Sweden’s Volvo and Germany’s Daimler. Shares in both companies were sharply lower in after-hours trading in Europe.
Trump said the truck tariffs were “for many reasons, but above all else, for National Security purposes!”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration launched a so-called Section 232 probe into imports of trucks to “determine the effects of national security”, setting the stage for Thursday’s announcement.
Section 232 is a trade law provision that gives the president broad authority to impose tariffs or other restrictions on imports when they are deemed a threat to national security.
Trump also said a 50 percent tariff on home renovation materials and a 30 percent tariff on upholstered furniture would be imposed, as he claimed that such products were swamping the US market from abroad.
According to the US International Trade Commission, in 2022, imports, mainly from Asia, represented 60 percent of all furniture sold, including 86 percent of all wood furniture and 42 percent of all upholstered furniture.
Shares in home furniture retailers Wayfair and Williams Sonoma, which depend on these imported goods, tumbled in after-hours trading.
Trump’s administration has already imposed a baseline 10 percent tariff on all countries, with higher individualised rates on nations where exports to the US far exceed imports.
Trump has also used emergency powers to impose extra tariffs on trade deal partners Canada and Mexico, as well as on China, citing concerns over fentanyl trafficking and undocumented migration.
It was not yet clear how these new tariffs would factor into the existing measures.
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