Donald Trump is considering imposing tariffs of about 25 per cent on imports of cars, drugs and chips into the US as he teased the next steps of a rapidly escalating trade war.
The US president said on Tuesday that he was weighing tariffs “in the neighbourhood” of 25 per cent on automotive imports and at least that level on pharmaceutical products and semiconductors.
“It’ll be 25 per cent and higher and it’ll go very substantially higher over the course of the year,” Trump said, referring to chips and drugs. The possibility of additional increases later in the year are designed to give companies “a little bit of a chance” to relocate operations to the US.