WASHINGTON — President Trump has given countries a Wednesday deadline to make their best offers on trade — with the White House calling it a “deadline” to submit offers to avoid massive reciprocal tariffs due to take effect on July 8.
The office of the US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer sent a letter, reported Monday by Reuters, “to all of our trading partners just to give them a friendly reminder that the deadline is coming up,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed at her Tuesday briefing.
Greer, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick “are in talks with many of our key trading partners around the globe… and they continue to be engaged in those discussions. And this letter was simply to remind these countries that the deadline is approaching and the President expects good deals, and we are on track for that,” Leavitt said.
Leavitt added that “each country has unique advantages and unique challenges to it, based on their markets and what they export to us and what we export to them. And so that’s why the president smartly advised his trade team to engage in tailor-made deal-making. And we saw that with the United Kingdom, and we will see that with other countries as well.”
Trump will sign orders later Tuesday to increase tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50% — after previously tightening 25% rates to end exceptions for top importers.
Trump on April 2 announced sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on countries, as well as a new 10% baseline tariff on most nations, which is roughly triple the prior rate. He paused most of the reciprocal tariffs shortly after they took effect to allow for trade talks.
Thus far, Trump has reached deals-in-principle with China and the UK, though neither has been formally drafted and ratified — as a court battle rages over the legality of the reciprocal levies.
The Chinese deal in May ended a tit-for-tat escalation that saw US tariffs rocket to about 145% before they were reduced to 30% pursuant to the agreement.
Trump is expected to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week to discuss the status of talks on a final deal, as well as his frustration that Beijing has not relaxed continued export restrictions on rare earth elements essential for batteries and high-tech equipment.
The UK pact left in effect the new 10% baseline tariff while exempting 100,000 UK-made cars per year from Trump’s new 25% global auto tariff. London, in turn, is due to drop its ethanol fuel tariff from 19% to zero, allowing market access to the corn-based fuel worth up to $700 million — while the US eliminates tariffs on British-made airplane parts, including Rolls-Royce engines.
Trump, who has outlined tariffs as a way to protect or reshore major industries, previously suggested that his administration would unilaterally dictate new and lower “reciprocal” rates if need be. The original rates were loosely correlated with the size of a country’s trade deficit with the US.
Trump also has indicated some flexibility with low-wage countries hammered particularly hard by the looming rates. Nations such as Bangladesh (with a 37% assessed reciprocal rate), Sri Lanka (44%) and Mauritius (40%), for example, are important cogs in the global textile trade due to cheap labor.
“We’re not looking to make sneakers and T-shirts. We want to make military equipment. We want to make big things. We want to make, do the AI thing,” Trump told a Post reporter on May 25.
“I’m not looking to make T-shirts, to be honest. I’m not looking to make socks. We can do that very well in other locations. We are looking to do chips and computers and lots of other things, and tanks and ships.”
