Trump threatens to impose drug, chip tariffs as soon as

The Guardian :

Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on pharmaceutical products and semiconductors as soon as 1 August, the latest deadline for the introduction of his “reciprocal” levies on individual countries. The US president told reporters late on Tuesday the taxes on drug imports could be announced “probably at the end of the month, and we’re going to start off with a low tariff and give the pharmaceutical companies a year or so to build, and then we’re going to make it a very high tariff”.

He added he had a similar timeline for imposing levies on semiconductors, as he believed it was “less complicated” to implement tariffs on the chips required by all electronic devices, but did not provide further details.

Earlier in the month, Trump told a meeting of his cabinet that he expected to raise tariffs on pharmaceuticals as high as 200 per cent, once he had given drug companies a year to a year and a half to bring their manufacturing to the US. He also threatened a 50 per cent tariff on imported copper in an effort to increase US production of the metal.