United States President Donald Trump has signed a memorandum unveiling a broad plan to charge reciprocal tariffs on every country that imposes duties on American imports.
This has continued to fuel concerns about the beginning of a global trade war.
The new tariffs will be imposed after a team re-examines the bilateral trade relationship each country has with the US.
Trump said earlier this week that he was also considering separate tariffs on cars, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.
A high-ranking team will look at bilateral tariff and trade relationships, starting with countries with the biggest trade surpluses and the highest tariff rates.
Reuters quotes a White House official saying the president’s reciprocal tariffs would match the higher duty rates charged by other countries.
US officials said a lack of reciprocal tariffs had contributed to a large and persistent trade deficit.
Trump said that in almost all cases, countries were charging the United States vastly more but that those days were over.
Just days earlier, he imposed a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminium imports that was condemned by close allies.
Trump blames Biden for Ukrainian war
Meanwhile, Trump has blamed his predecessor for the Russia-Ukraine war.
Trump was taking questions in the Oval Office when he blamed former President Joe Biden for opening the door to the possibility of Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
This comes after US Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, said in Brussels this week that his country did not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine was a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.
He said that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders before Russia invaded Crimea was an unrealistic objective.
Trump told reporters that he backed Hegseth’s position signaling Washington’s major policy shift towards Moscow.
“I don’t see any way that a country in Russia’s position could allow them, just in their position, could allow them to join NATO. I don’t see that happening. And long before President Putin Russia was very strong on the fact that I believe that’s the reason the war started, because Biden went out and said that they could join NATO. And he shouldn’t have said that. As soon as he said that, I said, You know what? You’re going to have a war now. And I was right about that.”