U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent speaks to press at the podium before Democratic and GOP luncheon press conferences in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on June 24. Photo by Annabelle Gordon/UPI | License Photo
July 6 (UPI) — Tariffs are set to return to previous levels on the Aug. 1 for countries that haven’t agreed to new deals, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday.
Bessent said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, just three days prior to the Trump administration’s July 9 deadline for tariffs to return, that it would be notifying 100 smaller countries that “if you don’t move things along, then on Aug. 1, you will boomerang back to your April 2 tariff level.”
The tariffs were originally set to take effect in April but were pushed back to this Wednesday while countries worked with the Trump administration to reach new deals on products from their countries, a window that allowed dozens of countries to work out the details of between 10% and 50%.
The Trump administration has said reaching deals with some countries has been increasingly difficult.
Aug. 1 is not a new deadline, Bessent said Sunday, but an opportunity to arrive at new tariff deals.
“We are saying this is when it’s happening,” Bessent said Sunday. “If you want to speed things up, have at it. If you want to go back to the old rate, that’s your choice.”
The administration has signaled that there may be some flexibility around the new timeline for key trading partners, but National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said on CBS’s Face the Nation President Donald Trump would make the ultimate decision.
“There are deadlines, and there are things that are close, and so maybe things will push back the dead, past the deadline,” Hassett said. “In the end the president’s going to make that judgment.”
The administration did not name the 12 countries that it would be communicating with this week about the tariff negotiations.