US tariff won’t dip below 10% for the “foreseeable future,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday.
President Trump slapped at least that rate against virtually every country last month, and his team has been hashing out lightning trade arrangements with foreign nations in their wake ever since.
But “we will not go below 10%,” Lutnick told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“We will, country by country, address their particular issues,” he said. “We’re going to be flexible, and we’re going to be super smart country by country.”
Trump had previously indicated that the 10% baseline rate would remain in effect but still left some wiggle room.
“You are going to always have a baseline,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday. “I mean, there could be an exception. At some point, we’ll see [if] somebody does something exceptional for us. It’s always possible.”
Last week, the Trump administration unveiled its first new trade arrangement since the president’s “Liberation Day” tariff push.
Under the deal, the US will keep its 10% baseline rate in effect but exempt 100,000 UK-made cars annually from the 25% auto tariff, according to the White House. In exchange, the British will reduce their ethanol-fuel tariff for the US from 19% to zero.
The US is also eliminating tariffs on British-made airplane components such as Rolls Royce engines.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom is matching the US 25% tariff rate on steel and aluminum.
The UK claimed in a press release that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer “negotiated the 25% tariff down to zero” for steel and aluminum, which has caused confusion about whether the 10% baseline rate still applies there.
Trump’s team is also working towards a “total reset” in trade relations with China, the president has said.
Top officials, including US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, huddled in Switzerland over the weekend to discuss trade disputes between the two global powers.
“It is really important for the United States. It’s really important that China,” Lutnick said of the deliberations. “Let’s let the team take care of that. And they’re hard at it right now, and everybody’s rooting for them from both sides.
“I think we’re optimistic that things will work out well,” he said.
On Saturday, Trump boasted online, “GREAT PROGRESS MADE” in talks between the two sides.
Lutnick declined to divulge more specifics about potential progress.
He was adamant that tariffs are not jacking up prices for consumers.
“Don’t buy the silly arguments that the US consumer pays,” he said, refuting the vast majority of economists who believe the cost of tariffs largely trickles down to consumers.
“Businesses, their job is to try to sell to the American consumer. And domestically produced products are not going to have that tariff. So the foreigners are going to finally have to compete,” the US official insisted.
So far, Trump has enacted the broadest slate of tariffs on foreign goods in a century.
They include tariffs on imports from China at about 145% for most goods.
Trump also enacted 25% tariffs on automobiles, aluminum, steel and imports. And he’s implemented a 25% tariff rate on imports from Canada and Mexico that don’t comply with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Trump has given countries until July 8 to hash out new deals. The president has teased additional tariffs such as a 100% rate on movies produced outside the US.
