Paywalled.

Donald Trump has said his administration plans to start sending letters on Monday to US trade partners dictating new tariffs, amid confusion over when the new rates will come into effect.

“It could be 12, maybe 15 [letters],” the president told reporters, “and we’ve made deals also, so we’re going to have a combination of letters and some deals have been made.”

A drone shot of the prow of a cargo ship stacked with containers
EU leaders race to secure a deal as deadline looms in Trump trade talks
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The Trump administration has said letters will go out notifying trading partners without a deal by 9 July of higher tariffs that would take effect on 1 August.

With his previously announced 90-day pause on tariffs set to end on 9 July, the president was asked if the new rates would come into effect this week or on 1 August, as some officials had suggested.

“No, there are going to be tariffs, the tariffs, the tariffs are going to be, the tariffs,” the president began uncertainly. “I think we’ll have most countries done by July 9, yeah. Either a letter or a deal.”

Sensing the confusion, his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, jumped in to add: “But they go into effect on August 1. Tariffs go into effect August 1, but the president is setting the rates and the deals right now.”

In April, Trump announced a 10% base tariff rate on most countries and additional duties ranging up to 50%, although he later delayed the effective date for all but 10% duties until 9 July.

The new date of 1 August offers countries a further three-week reprieve but also plunges importers into an extended period of uncertainty because of the lack of clarity around the tariffs.

After the EU and US spent the weekend locked in talks to try to reach a deal before 9 July, hopes were high that the two sides were close to an “agreement in principle”.

The EU trade spokesperson Olof Gill said on Monday that Trump and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, had held a “good exchange” on Sunday.

“We want to reach a deal with the US. We want to avoid tariffs. We believe they cause pain. We want to achieve win-win outcomes, not lose-lose outcomes,” Gill told reporters at a press briefing in Brussels.

“We’re fully geared up to get an agreement in principle by Wednesday, and we’re firing on all cylinders to that effect,” he added.

In an update on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said the US would begin delivering “TARIFF Letters, and/or Deals” from noon ET on Monday.

He also threatened an extra 10% levy on the Brics nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) after the bloc’s leaders issued a joint statement on Sunday at a summit in Rio de Janeiro raising “serious concerns about the rise of unilateral tariff” measures, which they said risked hurting the global economy.

Trump wrote: “Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy.”

The Chinese government said in response that it opposed tariffs being used as a tool to coerce others. Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, said the use of tariffs served no one.

Stock markets slipped in Asia on Monday amid the confusion over the actual tariff cutoff point. Japan’s Nikkei lost 0.3%, while South Korean stocks fell 0.7%. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan eased 0.1%.

European stocks were mixed. In the UK, the blue chip FTSE 100 index slipped 0.3%, with Shell and BP the biggest fallers on the back of weaker oil prices. The German Dax index rose by 0.3%, while in France the Cac 40 was broadly flat. The Stoxx Europe 600, which tracks the biggest companies on the continent, was also flat.

Industrial metals dropped, with copper down by 0.6% to $9,808 per tonne on the London Metal Exchange. Aluminium fell by 1.1% to $2,561 a tonne on the exchange, where all major metals were trading lower on Monday morning.

Here we go again: latest Trump tariff deadline looms amid inflation concerns
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Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, told CNN earlier on Sunday that several big announcements of trade agreements could come in the next days, noting that the EU had made good progress in its talks.

The EU is demanding immediate relief from tariffs on cars, which now stand at 29.5%, and reduction of tariffs in steel, as part of a UK-style framework deal that is being negotiated.

Bessent said Trump would also send out letters to 100 smaller countries with whom the US does not have much trade, notifying them that they would face higher tariff rates first set on 2 April and then suspended until 9 July.

There is a lot at stake
The world’s most powerful man is using his office to punish journalistic organisations that won’t follow his orders or who report critically on his policies. Donald Trump’s actions against the press include bans, lawsuits and hand-picking his own pool of reporters.

But the global threat against the press is bigger than just Trump.

Economic and authoritarian forces around the globe are challenging journalists’ ability to report. An independent press, one that those in power can’t simply overrule, is crucial to democracy. Figures such as Trump and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán want to crush it through exclusion and influence.

The Guardian is a global news organisation that will stand up to attacks on the free press. We have no interest serving those with immense power or immense wealth.

We are owned by an independent trust devoted only to protecting and defending our journalism. That means we don’t have a billionaire owner dictating what our reporters can cover or what opinions our columnists can have, or shareholders demanding a quick return.

The global situation is shifting hour by hour, making this an extremely challenging moment. It will take brave, well-funded, committed, quality journalism to call out what is happening.

Our job is to make sure we do not get overwhelmed as Trump floods the zone. We must focus on the stories that will make the biggest impact on people’s lives, while holding the powerful to account. We’ll also continue to focus on the ideas people need to create a better world: a reason for hope.

As the writer and Guardian columnist Rebecca Solnit says: “authentic hope requires clarity … and imagination”.

The Guardian can provide both and, with the help of readers like you in Ireland, we can drive hope by reporting truthfully on what is happening and never pulling our punches.

A lot is at stake.

And now the latest X post says they could be delayed until January 2029.

Clown show man. Pull the trigger or get off the pot man. I guess it is Trump, he can just shit in his diaper.

“and we’ve made deals also"

Deals? Uh-oh. So the plan is to stiff our creditors and declare strategic bankruptcy. I feel so Great again.

Every week is Infrastructure week.

Gotta pump up the stock market before dropping it on its head for the 8th time!

I prefer Don Taco to Taco Trump.

To me “Don Trump Always Chickens Out” makes more sense than “Trump Always Chickens Out Trump”. Probably not a big deal though.

Anybody who watches Fox News - are they saying “uncertainty” in every other sentence yet, like during the entire Obama administration?

Or is 2025 uncertainty a different kind of uncertainty?