Howard Lutnick, U.S. Secretary of Commerce speaks in the course of the Pennsylvania Power And Innovation Summit 2025 at Carnegie Mellon College in Pittsburgh on July 15, 2025.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated Sunday that Aug. 1 is the deadline for nations to start paying tariffs to the USA, however stated that “nothing stops nations from speaking to us after August 1.”
“That is a tough deadline, so on August 1, the brand new tariff charges will are available in,” Lutnick stated on CBS Information, when requested concerning the deadline for his tariffs on the European Union.
President Donald Trump’s tariff deadline has shifted since he introduced his steep levies on buying and selling companions on April 2, however White Home officers now keep that Aug. 1 is a agency deadline.
“Nothing stops nations from speaking to us after August 1, however they’ll begin paying the tariffs on August 1,” Lutnick stated.
Lutnick stated that some small nations, “the Latin American nations, the Caribbean nations, many nations in Africa,” would have a baseline tariff of 10%.
Lutnick’s feedback might convey reduction for nations anxiously awaiting a definitive determination on tariff charges from Trump, who lately urged that baseline tariff charges for these nations could possibly be over 10%.
The president introduced final week that letters to smaller nations could be despatched out quickly. “We’ll most likely set one tariff for all of them … most likely a bit over 10%,” Trump stated.
Lutnick added that “the larger economies will both open themselves up or they will pay a good tariff to America.”
Lutnick’s feedback come after Trump earlier this month despatched letters to buying and selling companions notifying them of the brand new tariff charges, which reached as excessive as 40% for some nations.
The letters, posted on Trump’s Reality Social, stated that tariffs would take impact Aug. 1, prompting last-minute negotiations from buying and selling companions in search of a decrease charge.