US President Donald Trump has postponed plans to hike tariffs on most countries except for China, which now faces 125% tariffs when exporting goods to the USA, The Guardian reported today.
Since Trump first announced universal 10% tariffs on all imports into the USA on 2 April, world financial markets have plunged, fuelling fears of a global recession.
After insisting for days that he would hold firm on his trade strategy, Trump announced on 9 April that all countries that had not retaliated against US tariffs would receive a reprieve until July but would still face a blanket US tariff of 10%, The Guardian wrote.
However, as China was preparing to add an additional tariff on US goods – bringing its total levy to 84% – from 10 April, Trump said he would raise US tariffs on Chinese exports to 125% with immediate effect, the report said.
China has called the president’s escalation of the trade war “a mistake on top of a mistake” and vowed to “fight to the end”.
“The US’s practice of escalating tariffs on China … seriously infringes on China’s legitimate rights and interests and seriously damages the rules-based multilateral trading system,” the Chinese finance ministry was quoted as saying.
According to administration officials, the USA’s neighbours and closest trading partners Mexico and Canada will also be hit with a 10% US tariff.
“More than 75 countries” had contacted the US federal government “to negotiate a solution” since Trump announced plans for steep tariffs on their exports, the president claimed in a post on Truth Social.
In breaking news, the European Union (EU) has also suspended its 25% retaliatory tariffs on the USA for 90 days in response to Trump’s decision to pause his duties on most US trading partners, a Euractiv report quoted European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen as saying today.
“While finalising the adoption of the EU countermeasures that saw strong support from our member states, we will put them on hold for 90 days,” von der Leyen said.
“If negotiations are not satisfactory, our countermeasures will kick in.”
The EU had been planning to put a 25% tariff on up to US$23bn in US goods, including soyabeans, from 15 April in response to Trump imposing 25% tariffs on US steel and aluminium imports.
If introduced, the EU’s retaliatory tariffs on the USA could negatively impact US soyabean imports and could lead to EU importers turning to South American soyabean suppliers, according to a 26 March report by Germany’s Union for the Promotion of Plants and Protein (UFOP).
With Ukraine also expected to step in as a supplier, US soyabean producers could lose a crucial market, UFOP said.
After Brazil, the USA is the world’s second largest supplier of soyabeans, with national production totalling just under 119M tonnes and approximately 50M tonnes of US soyabeans expected to be exported in the 2024/25 season, according to the 26 March UFOP report.
Although China was the main recipient, the EU also imported a significant share, making it the second most important market for the USA, the report said.
According to EU Commission data, the EU imported a total of 13.1M tonnes of soyabeans in the previous crop year. Of this, approximately 5.9M tonnes was shipped from Brazil, while 5.3M tonnes were sourced from the USA, representing a share of almost 41% of total imports.
In the current season, as of 16 March, the EU had imported around 9.6M tonnes of soyabeans, with the USA accounting for the largest share at 5.1M tonnes, or just over 53%.
However, as the Brazilian harvest did not take place until February/March 2025, it was likely soyabeans would primarily be sourced from South America’s 2025 harvest in the coming months, according to analysis by Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft.
Meanwhile, leading palm oil producers Indonesia and Malaysia potentially face 32% and 24% tariffs respectively. Jakarta has sent a delegation to the USA to negotiate while Malaysia says it not considering introducing retaliatory tariffs, according to a 7 April Bangkok Post report.
The Indonesian government also said it was in talks with Malaysia to jointly take steps in addressing the tariffs.
The tariffs on Malaysia would have minimal impact on the country’s palm oil sector as the country’s palm oil exports to the USA accounted for less than 1% of total national production, said Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) director general Dr Ahmad Parveez Ghulam Kadir.
“Although the tariff may have an indirect effect, such as price increases, it will not significantly affect demand in the USA,” a 7 April New Straits Times report quoted him as saying.
