A weekend of rapid-fire tariff developments raised the stakes for President Trump’s coming promise of vast new tariffs. But it provided even less clarity on what he will actually implement as his self-imposed deadline looms in just two days.
Perhaps the only thing clear at this point is that a dizzying array of options remain on the table for what Trump calls “Liberation Day.”
The vastness of possibilities appears to be widening after Trump recently teased that he “may give a lot of countries breaks” and said Sunday night he could be “generous” even as he quickly added that “all countries” could be impacted.
A campaign trail idea of blanket 20% across-the-board tariffs also appears to have reemerged as at least an option.
The developments also made clear that a single person — Trump himself — will be the one determining the final decision with even his close advisers publicly and privately able to only offer guesses about what he would do.
“I can’t give you any forward-looking guidance on what’s going to happen this week,” National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett offered in a Fox News appearance on Sunday. “The president has got a heck of a lot of analysis before him, and he’s going to make the right choice I’m sure.”
A White House official declined to add more over the weekend — even on questions like how much remains in flux internally and whether any of Trump’s decisions to be unveiled this week have been made.
Meanwhile, the economic stakes are growing with a new round of market turbulence already in evidence this week as some businesses — especially automakers — rush orders. And Goldman Sachs (GS) revised its economic forecasts lower in response to the likelihood of larger tariffs, predicting slower growth and more inflation.
“The only near-certainty is that the effective US tariff rate is heading to its highest level since the 1940s,” Capitol Economics added Monday morning in an analysis. “That means rising inflation in the US and growing economic risks for its key trading partners.”
Even an overall hope that the coming week — however unsettling — may provide a measure of clarity for businesses going forward appears less and less likely.
Economist Jens Nordvig, the founder of Exante Data, summed up those feelings by posting online that whatever Trump decides “is unlikely to be any final, complete and internally consistent solution.”
This week’s news, he predicted, “will be adjusted and negotiated in coming weeks and months. Meaning that uncertainty will linger.”
Read more: What Trump’s tariffs mean for the economy and your wallet
New hour-by-hour developments have also left previous assumptions perhaps moot about what “Liberation Day” could look like.
The expectation in the middle of last week, echoed by a White House official to Yahoo Finance, was for “pretty straightforward” country-by-country duties structured in line with Wall Street expectations.
But now Trump and his aides appear to be thinking in bigger terms.
Senior White House trade and manufacturing counselor Peter Navarro offered an estimate Sunday that Trump 2.0 tariffs in total could add around $700 billion a year annually to US coffers — combining $100 billion from recently announced 25% auto tariffs to $600 billion more from other duties.
Navarro didn’t offer additional details in that interview on Fox News Sunday — and didn’t immediately respond to a request for clarity from Yahoo Finance — but it’s an ambitious top-line number that suggests high duties.
For example, even measures like a 20% blanket tariff are estimated as likely to raise only about half the amount floated by Navarro. On Sunday evening, the Wall Street Journal added in a report that those 20% across-the-board tariffs indeed remain on the table.
It’s a move, if Trump seriously considers it or moves forward with it, that could add a new level of instability to markets after the White House’s focus on reciprocity in recent months had led some to take solace in the idea that at least the more dramatic options like blanket tariffs were less likely.
Either way, in comments to reporters on Sunday night as Trump returned to Washington, the president promised that he plans to target “essentially all of the countries that we’re talking about” with new duties this week.
It was the latest in a series of comments from the president that offered little in the way of clarity. At one point last week, he said some countries could be “pleasantly surprised” with the coming rates. But in an NBC interview on Saturday, he also said of foreign automakers potentially raising prices in response to his coming auto tariffs: “I couldn’t care less.”
“I hope they raise their prices,” he added, “because if they do, people are going to buy American-made cars.”
The president has also continued to add new tariff threats almost daily. This weekend he mentioned new ideas for “secondary tariffs” on Russian oil if peace talks drag out there as well as another round of secondary tariffs on Iran over that country’s nuclear program.
Other key tariffs are also set to begin this week and have been announced and implemented by Trump via presidential action.
Those include those 25% auto tariffs as well as new “secondary tariffs” on Venezuela to the potential full reinstatement of 25% duties on Mexico and Canada over illegal drugs and migration.
Trump has also promised other new sector-specific duties soon with pharmaceuticals and lumber seemingly most in focus in new duties that could also be announced this week.
It was all a reflection of how Trump has given himself extraordinary latitude in the coming days to implement tariffs as he alone sees fit.
One early hint may come on Tuesday, when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is scheduled to deliver to the president the results of a weeks-long investigation into reciprocity in world trade that is intended to allow Trump to decide the duties he would like to levy in response.
Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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