President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States will retain a baseline 10 percent tariff on imports from nearly all trading partners—even after new trade agreements are signed—describing the policy as a permanent floor with only rare exceptions.
“You are going to always have a baseline,” Trump told reporters at the White House on May 9. “You have a baseline of a minimum of 10 percent, and some of them will be much higher.”
While Trump left the door open to possible exemptions, his broader message signaled that trade partners should expect the universal 10 percent levy as a fixture of U.S. trade policy. “At some point, we’ll see [if] somebody does something exceptional for us,” he said. “It’s always possible.”…