Donald Trump released another round of letters to trade partners Wednesday that didn’t include updates on negotiated deals but offered new threats of rates ranging from 20-30% on nations from the Philippines to Moldova set to take effect on Aug. 1.
The entire list of six letters released Wednesday morning so far include 30% rates for Algeria, Iraq, and Libya, 25% rates for Brunei and Moldova, as well as a 20% rate for the Philippines.
The list focused on lower-level trading partners. The Philippines was the biggest announcement Wednesday but that nation ranks about 30th in US trading partners by value according to US government data.
The rates continued a trend of rates being announced this week that largely tracked what was first announced in April with some alterations. The Philippines, as one example, saw its proposed rate jump slightly from 17 to 20%.
This latest flurry of pronouncements comes on top of 14 letters issued Monday and during a week that has seen a surge in bellicose new rhetoric from the president.
Markets have largely ignored the news after one of the first moves from the president this week was to push ahead his “reciprocal” tariff deadlines by about three weeks via executive action.
“Trade negotiations take time and the notion you’re going to be simultaneously negotiating with dozens of countries just really limits the bandwidth of the negotiating teams,” Wendy Cutler, a former trade negotiator currently at the Asia Society, said in a Yahoo Finance live appearance Wednesday.
“August 1 now is the next deadline and even though the president is saying there’ll be no more further extensions, I think our trading partners are beginning to realize that this may go on and on and on,” she added.
Also damping the potential effect was how missing from Wednesday’s series of letters — which appeared in sequence on Truth Social starting at a little after 11:30 am ET — were any signs of any progress on deals with India and the European Union as arrangements with two of America’s top trading partners remain outstanding.
The chances of a deal with Europe got more complicated after Trump said on Tuesday “we are probably two days off from sending them a letter.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered early Wednesday morning that Europe continued to negotiate but “we get ready for all scenarios.”
It was the first of two promised releases Wednesday with Trump promising “an additional number of Countries being released in the afternoon.”
It was all after a delay that, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, came at the request of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who said he could secure trade deals with more time.
The new timeline clearly dampened any market effects this week.
“The markets watched it all with as much interest as watching reruns on TV,” quipped Edward Yardeni in a note to clients about developments so far before this latest letter release. “President Donald Trump huffed and puffed again. The financial markets’ reaction was ho-hum.”
Skepticism also appeared to deepening further Wednesday that the terms in Trump’s letters would exactly be in place in August after Trump trade counselor Peter Navarro offered on Fox Business that these letters are being absorbed by markets well because they understand “these are all negotiations as we move in time.”
Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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