Trump Announces Plans to Impose New Trade Tariffs

President Donald Trump recently shared plans to place a 25% import tax on all steel and aluminum flowing into the US, a course of action mainly targeting Canada. He will be speaking further this week about reciprocal tariffs against countries that tax imports from the US, although he is still to mention the specific countries to be affected, as well as if any exemptions apply.

"If they charge us, we charge them," Trump said.

Sunday, while sharing with reporters as he traveled to the Super Bowl in New Orleans from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Canada and Mexico are found among the US's largest steel trading partners, while Canada tops as the biggest supplier of aluminum to the US.

Overall, 25% tariiffs were imposed by Trump on steel imports and 10% on aluminum imports in his first term from Canada, Mexico, and the European Union.

The year after, the US made a deal with Canada and Mexico to remove these tariffs, whereas import duties on the EU were still there until 2021.

Speaking aboard Air Force One on Monday, Trump announced that he would impose tariffs on "everybody" with regard to steel and aluminum.

"Any steel coming into the United States is going to have a 25% tariff," he said.

The Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, accused Trump of "alienating goal posts ad creating a constant chaos, upping risks to the economy" on an online post in response. The Ontario province boasts the steel production in Canada.

Trump's comments also caused a drop in the major South Korean steel and automobile manufacturers' stocks. South Korea is an important steel exporter to the US.

Shares of steel company POSCO Holdings dropped up to 3.6%, while Hyundai Steel registered decline up to 2.9%.

Kia Corp's shares also went down by 3.6% during early morning trading.

Trump's actions are visible already again as another big step in his trade policy, which has been retaliated by China.

Tariffs are the largest part of Trump's winning economic strategy since he believes that would drive the US economy, create jobs, and add into tax income.

Earlier in the present month, Trump put a threat of a 25% import duty on products entering from Canada and Mexico but postponed the same for the next 30 days and would be in effect early March on due discussions with the leaders of both countries.

At the beginning of the new month in March, he also introduced 10% new US tariffs on all Chinese imports, thus triggering a retaliatory taxation from Beijing effective last Monday.
Trump said that he would bring an announcement of further tit-for-tat tariffs on "Tuesday or Wednesday" and that they would take effect "almost immediately" after the announcement.

"The ones that are taking advantage of the United States, we're going to have reciprocal [tariffs]," he said. "It'll be great for everybody, including other countries".