Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, after receiving critiques over 10% tariffs on bananas and tariffs on Asian food imports from House Appropriations Committee members, said that countries that sell "unavailable natural resources" like bananas, cocoa, coffee and spices will be allowed to export those goods duty-free, as long as they don't have barriers to U.S. agricultural exports.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that there would be $2.5 trillion collected in tariffs -- after accounting for consumer changes -- from 2025 to 2035 if the global 10% reciprocal tariff remained, de minimis was still curtailed, and tariffs on most Chinese products and on some Mexican and Canadian products, as well as 25% tariffs on the auto sector, steel and aluminum, continue during that period. (The estimate was prepared before the president doubled the tariffs on steel and aluminum.)
Two Republican senators on the Appropriations Committee whose states have major foreign automakers' factories asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick if the administration would support an export credit for major auto exporters. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., referred to the fact that about two-thirds of the Mercedes vehicles assembled in Alabama are exported, and asked if an export credit is still under discussion.
Joseph Barloon, who was a general counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during Donald Trump's first term, told Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., that he believes in rules-based trade.
House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., said his vision of revoking Permanent Normal Trade Relations status for China is not to move Chinese goods to Column 2, but to create a new tariff schedule just for Chinese goods, with high rates reserved for strategic goods. Moolenaar, who has sponsored legislation to end PNTR (see 2501240061), described the approach he'd like to see at a Center for a New Security conference June 3.
Steel and aluminum and their derivatives will be subject to 50% tariffs, not 25% tariffs, President Donald Trump wrote in a proclamation. The changes take effect at 12:01 a.m. June 4.
President Donald Trump said that although the 25% tariffs on steel, and the recently hiked aluminum tariffs, have "helped provide critical price support" to domestic producers, the rates are not high enough to enable them "to develop and maintain the rates of capacity production utilization that are necessary for the industries' sustained health and for projected national defense needs." So those rates will increase to 50% at 12:01 a.m. EDT June 4.
President Donald Trump's announcement that he would double Section 232 tariffs on aluminum, alongside steel, to 50% -- when the vast majority of imported aluminum was duty-free until March 12 -- drew warnings from the largest aluminum trade group.
Georgetown University law professor Jennifer Hillman said that while she expects the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to take months to decide if the tariff actions under emergency powers weren't legal, the court might not stay the vacation of the orders during that time.
President Donald Trump said at a press conference in the Oval Office that the U.S. would no longer have an economically viable country if higher courts uphold the rulings from the Court of International Trade and a U.S. district court that he doesn't have unbounded power to hike tariffs under an emergency statute.