The White House is set to put pressure on the U.S.’s trading partners this week to sign new tariff deals, with the hope that they will be finalized before a Wednesday deadline.

The Trump administration is expected to send dozens of letters to countries that have not made a trade deal, warning them that higher tariffs could kick in Aug. 1, White House National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday.

“Our smaller trading partners could become much bigger trading partners,” Hassett said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” “And that’s, I think, one of the reasons why countries are racing to set deals up with us ahead of the deadline.”

As many as 15 letters will be going out beginning Monday, President Trump confirmed to reporters before heading back to the White House from his New Jersey club on Sunday. Some will go out on Tuesday and Wednesday, he said, adding that “some deals have been made.”

Mr. Trump wrote later on social media that “Letters, and/or Deals, with various Countries from around the World” would start being delivered at 12:00 a.m. ET Monday.

“Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff,” Mr. Trump wrote in another post, referring to an alliance of nations with emerging economies, which held a summit in Brazil over the weekend. “There will be no exceptions to this policy. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Initially comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the group now also includes Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates.

Mr. Trump did not specify what exactly would trigger the added BRICS tariff.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also told reporters Sunday that higher tariffs could go into effect Aug. 1 for countries that don’t make a deal by Wednesday.

Questions remain about which countries will be notified, whether anything will change in the days ahead and whether Mr. Trump will once more push off imposing the rates.

In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Bessent said about 100 letters will be sent to small countries “where we don’t have very much trade” and where tariffs are already at the baseline of 10%. The treasury secretary also said that the administration is primarily focused on nations with the largest trade deficit with the U.S.

“There are 18 important trading relationships that account for 95% of our deficit, and those are the ones we’re concentrating on,” Bessent said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent rejected the idea that Aug. 1 was a new deadline and declined to say what might happen Wednesday.

“We’ll see,” Bessent said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I’m not going to give away the playbook.”

Mr. Trump and his top trade advisers say he could extend the time for dealmaking but they insist the administration is applying maximum pressure on other nations. Hassett said that Trump would decide when it was time to give up on negotiations.

Stephen Miran, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, likewise said countries negotiating in good faith and making concessions could “sort of, get the date rolled.”

The steeper tariffs that Trump announced April 2 threatened to overhaul the global economy and lead to broader trade wars. A week later, after the financial markets had panicked, his administration suspended for 90 days most of the higher taxes on imports just as they were to take effect, but he kept the 10% baseline in place while raising the tariff rate on goods imported from China. Chinese goods are now subject to 30% across-the-board tariffs.

With the freeze on sweeping U.S. tariffs set to expire Wednesday, July 9, the White House

has touted new trade agreements with countries in recent weeks, like China, the U.K. and Vietnam. But there are still questions heading into the week with other deals yet to be announced.

Bessent said the U.S. was “close to several deals,” and predicted several big announcements over the next few days. He gave no details.

“I think we’re going to see a lot of deals very quickly,” Bessent said.

Given the complexity of trade deals, some experts think the U.S. is likely to extend the tariff pause for some nations.

“It can take a lot more time [than 90 days] to truly iron these things out,” Clark Packard, a trade policy expert and research fellow at the Cato Institute, a nonpartisan public policy think tank, told CBS News’ MoneyWatch.

Mr. Trump last week announced a deal with Vietnam. Under the terms of the agreement, Mr. Trump said the U.S. would levy 20% tariffs on goods imported to the U.S. from Vietnam, and a 40% tariff on “any transshipping.” The president said Vietnam would “‘OPEN THEIR MARKET TO THE UNITED STATES,’ meaning that, we will be able to sell our product into Vietnam at ZERO Tariff.”

That was a decline from the 46% tax on Vietnamese imports he proposed in April — one of his so-called “reciprocal tariffs” targeting dozens of countries with which the U.S. runs a trade deficit.

Asked if he expected to reach deals with the European Union or India, Trump said Friday that “letters are better for us” because there are so many countries involved.

“We have India coming up and with Vietnam, we did it, but much easier to send a letter saying, ‘Listen, we know we have a certain deficit, or in some cases a surplus, but not too many. And this is what you’re going to have to pay if you want to do business in the United States.”

Canada, however, will not be one of the countries receiving letters, Trump’s ambassador, Pete Hoekstra, said Friday after trade talks between the two countries recently resumed.

“Canada is one of our biggest trading partners,” Hoekstra told CTV News in an interview in Ottawa. “We’re going to have a deal that’s articulated.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has said he wants a new deal in place by July 21 or Canada will increase trade countermeasures.

Hoekstra would not commit to a date for a trade agreement and said even with a deal, Canada could still face some tariffs. But “we’re not going to send Canada just a letter,” he said.

CNN —

President Donald Trump has threatened new tariffs on any nation supporting “anti-American” policies of the BRICS group of emerging economies, as he announced tariff letters would be sent out to scores of countries from Monday, ahead of a key deadline.

In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said the US would impose an additional 10% tariff on “any country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS” with “no exceptions,” though it was not immediately clear which policies Trump was referring to.

The BRICS group, an acronym of founding members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has long stood as a disparate body of countries united by a shared view that global power-sharing should be redistributed to reflect current global economic realities for a “multipolar” as opposed to a West-led world order.

The group has recently expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates as members, and has ten lower-level partner countries – including Belarus, Nigeria, Thailand and Vietnam. It’s not clear if Saudi Arabia has accepted an invitation to join the economic club.

Brazil is currently hosting a BRICS summit, with leaders releasing a joint declaration on Sunday voicing “serious concerns” about the “rise of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures” – an apparent a veiled jibe at the Trump administration’s trade policy.

The US administration’s 90-day tariff pause is set to come to an end on Wednesday and Trump confirmed on Sunday night that letters will be sent out to dozens of countries from Monday.

“I am pleased to announce that the UNITED STATES TARIFF Letters, and/or Deals, with various Countries from around the World, will be delivered starting 12:00 P.M. (Eastern), Monday, July 7th,” he said in a separate Truth Social on Sunday night.

“If you don’t move things along, then on August 1 you will boomerang back to your April 2 tariff level,” Bessent said about trading partners Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union with Dana Bash.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent previously said that tariffs could return to April levels, if countries failed to strike a deal with the US.

Video Ad Feedback Bessent outlines final tariff warning as trade deadline nears 01:17 – Source: CNN Bessent outlines final tariff warning as trade deadline nears 01:17

Trump has suggested the letters would include duty rates at the current 10% baseline, or as extensive as 70%. Bessent said Sunday the United States would not impose 70% tariff rates on major trading partners.

“We’re gonna be sending letters out on Monday having to do with the trade deals. Could be 12, maybe 15 … and we’ve made deals, also,” Trump told CNN’s Betsy Klein when asked about tariff rates late Sunday afternoon at Morristown Municipal Airport in New Jersey.

Following Bessent’s comments, Trump added that letters will continue to go out on Tuesday and Wednesday. “We’ll have most countries done by July 9 — either a letter or a deal,” he said earlier on Sunday.

“The president is right in the midst of discussing all sorts of deals with all sorts of countries,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters Sunday alongside Trump. He also confirmed that tariff rates would go into effect on August 1.

Bessent on Sunday declined to confirm to CNN which countries were close to a deal.

He said that about 100 letters will be sent to small countries “where we don’t have very much trade,” many of which are “already at the baseline 10%.” Trump on Friday touted letters as the “better” option for countries that fail to negotiate deals before the July 9 deadline.

On April 9, Trump announced a complete three-month pause on all the “reciprocal” tariffs after insisting historically high tariffs were here to stay. Later that month, he told Time magazine that he had already struck 200 trade deals but declined to say with whom.

So far, Trump has only announced deals with three countries: the United Kingdom, which maintained a 10% tariff rate; China, which temporarily paused sky-high duties on most goods from 145% to 30%; and a minimum 20% tariff on goods from Vietnam.

In response to the three deals being described as “frameworks,” Bessent said the upcoming letters “will set their tariff rates. So we will have 100 done in the next few days.”

“Many of these countries never even contacted us,” he said, adding that “We have the leverage in this situation,” as the country facing a trading deficit.

Bessent pushed back against August 1 as a new deadline. He also described the administration’s plan as applying “maximum pressure.”

“It’s not a new deadline. We are saying, “This is when it’s happening. If you want to speed things up, have at it. If you want to back to the old rate, that’s your choice,’” Bessent said about America’s trading partners, and used the European Union as an example of countries coming to the table after Trump threatened 50% tariffs on EU imports.

BRICS

Trump’s threat of new tariffs on any nation supporting the “anti-American policies” of BRICS countries on Sunday injects fresh instability and uncertainty into the president’s global tariff campaign, as the July 9 deadline for “reciprocal” tariff negotiations approaches.

Some BRICS countries have been negotiating directly with the Trump administration, in particular India. It’s unclear if Trump’s new threat would impact those talks.

Trump earlier this year threatened to place a “100% tariff” on “seemingly hostile” member countries if they supported a shared currency. The idea of a BRICS currency was floated by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2023, but has not been a focus of the body, which rather seeks to bolster trade and financing in their local currencies.

On Sunday, the group of BRICS leaders backed ongoing discussions of a cross-border payments initiative between member countries.

BRICS countries also condemned the military strikes on member state Iran and expressed “serious concern” over “deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure” and “peaceful” nuclear facilities, without naming Israel, which carried out days of strikes against Iran last month, or the US, which bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities as part of the same onslaught.

When asked about Trump’s latest comments at a regular media briefing Monday, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry called BRICS an “important platform for cooperation among emerging markets and developing countries,” which “avoids bloc confrontation or targeting any specific country.”

“We consistently oppose tariff wars and trade wars, as well as using tariffs as a tool for coercion and pressure. Arbitrarily increasing tariffs does not serve the interests of any party,” spokesperson Mao Ning said, in response to a question about how China would react if additional tariffs were imposed on it over BRICS.

Economic risks

Economists have warned that Trump’s trade war, especially the wide-ranging tariffs on Chinese imports, will increase costs for consumers. Some companies, including Walmart, have said they will raise prices for customers despite pushback from Trump.

“We have seen no inflation so far,” Bessent said on “Fox News Sunday,” calling such projections “misinformation” and “tariff derangement syndrome.” Bessent and other Trump officials have repeatedly argued in recent months that countries like China would bear the cost of tariffs.

US wholesale inflation rose slightly in May, driven in part by costlier goods, though tariff-related effects were largely muted. The Producer Price Index, a closely watched measurement of wholesale inflation, showed that prices paid to producers rose 0.1% in May, lifting the annual rate to 2.6%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released in June.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who has blasted Bessent for undermining the economic impact of tariffs, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that tariffs “will probably collect some revenue” but would come at the expense of higher inflation and less competitiveness for American producers.

Also appearing on “This Week,” Stephen Miran, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said there was no “lasting evidence” that tariffs imposed on China during Trump’s first term hurt the economy and the administration has only “repeated the same performance” this year.

“Tariff revenue is pouring in. There’s no sign of any economically significant inflation whatsoever and job creation remains healthy,” Miran said.

CNN’s Kit Maher and Alicia Wallace contributed to this report.

By Kevin Buckland and Johann M Cherian

TOKYO (Reuters) -The U.S. dollar wobbled close to multi-year lows against major currency peers on Monday, with traders alert for any trade-related headlines in the countdown to President Donald Trump’s tariff deadline.

Most U.S. trade partners are set to see much steeper duties at the end of the 90-day moratorium on Trump’s “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday. Trump clarified on Sunday that the new rates would take effect from August 1.

Trump said his administration was close to finalising several trade deals in the coming days but he will also name some dozen countries later on Monday that are receiving letters with their new, higher levies.

Trump also threatened to slap an additional 10% tariff on nations aligning with the “anti-American” policies of the BRICS emerging economies.

So far, only Britain, China and Vietnam have agreed any sort of trade deal with the Trump administration.

The tariff uncertainty weighed in particular on the risk-sensitive Australian and New Zealand dollars, ahead of monetary policy decisions in both countries in the coming two days.

“Market volatility appears inevitable when the pause officially ends and new tariff levels are announced,” James Kniveton, a senior corporate FX dealer at Convera, wrote in a client note.

At the same time, “the impact may prove more muted this time,” he said. “Unlike previous announcements where tariff levels exceeded expectations, current proposals are largely anticipated. Moreover, markets appear to be pricing in continued deadline extensions.”

Options data also reflected that currency markets were pricing in limited volatility resurgence ahead of the tariff deadline on expectations that there could be further extensions.

The dollar was flat at 0.7959 Swiss franc on Monday, edging back towards the July 1 low of 0.7869 franc, a level not seen since January 2015.

The euro slipped 0.3% to $1.1750, while the dollar firmed 0.38% to 145.15 yen, reversing an earlier decline.

Despite multiple rounds of negotiations, progress on agreements with Japan and the European Union has been slow and markets are concerned that Tokyo and Brussels might not be able to secure deals with Washington ahead of the deadline.

The dollar index, which measures the currency against six major counterparts, edged up 0.26% to 97.223, but was close to last week’s nearly 3-1/2-year trough of 96.373.

The selloff in the currency this year has been a result of investors questioning the safe-haven status of the greenback and reassessing earlier expectations that the United States could be spared in the event of a global economic slowdown.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters following a Senate Republican luncheon, June 27, 2025 in Washington,

US tariffs will kick in on August 1 if trading partners from Taiwan to the European Union do not strike deals with Washington, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday.

The rates will “boomerang back” to the sometimes very high levels that President Donald Trump had announced on April 2 — before he suspended the levies to allow for trade talks and set a July 9 deadline for agreements, Bessent told CNN.

Bessent confirmed comments by Trump to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday in which he also cited a new deadline: “Well, I’ll probably start them on August 1.”

The president told reporters Sunday he had signed about a dozen letters to inform countries of rate hikes, to be sent out on Monday.

“I think we’ll have most countries done by July 9, either a letter or a deal,” Trump told reporters Sunday, adding that some deals have already been made.

Standing at his side, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed tariffs would kick in on August 1, “but the President is setting the rates and the deals right now.”

The tariffs were part of a broader announcement in April where Trump imposed a 10 percent duty on goods from almost all trading partners, with a plan to step up these rates for a select group within days.

But he swiftly paused the hikes until July 9, allowing for trade talks to take place.

Read moreBRICS leaders at Rio summit condemn Trump tariffs, slam attacks on Iran

Countries have been pushing to strike deals that would help them avoid these elevated duties.

So far, the Trump administration has unveiled deals with the United Kingdom and Vietnam, while Washington and Beijing agreed to temporarily lower staggeringly high levies on each other’s products.

Bessent said the administration was “close to several deals.”

“I would expect to see several big announcements over the next couple of days,” he said.

But he would not say which countries he was referring to, adding: “I don’t want to let them off the hook.”

‘Maximum pressure’ playbook

Aboard Air Force One on Friday, Trump said sending notices would be much easier than “sitting down and working 15 different things… this is what you have to pay, if you want to do business (with) the United States.”

Bessent pushed back at CNN host Dana Bash’s assertion the administration was using threats rather than negotiations, and denied that Trump was setting a new deadline with the August 1 date.

“It’s not a new deadline. We are saying, this is when it’s happening. If you want to speed things up, have at it. If you want to go back to the old rate, that’s your choice,” he said.

Read moreEU leaders mull new US trade proposals ahead of Trump tariffs deadline

He said the playbook was to apply “maximum pressure” and cited the European Union as an example, saying they are “making very good progress” after a slow start.

EU and US negotiators are holding talks over the weekend, and France’s finance minister said Saturday he hoped they could strike a deal this weekend.

Other countries were still expressing unease, however.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said Sunday he “won’t easily compromise” in trade talks with Washington.

And BRICS leaders of fast-growing economies meeting in Rio de Janeiro raised “serious concerns” that the “indiscriminate” import tariffs were illegal and risked hurting global trade.

When probed about worries that steep levies could feed into broader US inflation, Bessent said there was a difference between “inflation and one-time price adjustments.”

“Inflation is a generalised monetary phenomenon. We’re not going to see that. And thus far, we haven’t even seen the one-time price adjustments,” Bessent told Fox News Sunday.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

U.S. President Donald Trump’s three-month pause on his sweeping global tariffs is set to expire in just a few days, unless he opts to give countries extra time to negotiate deals — as his advisers have suggested this weekend.

Ahead of the deadline, some trade experts say Canada still faces big risks, despite avoiding that round of levies back in April.

“What the president needs is a bunch of wins by July 9 because he needs to show that his strategy is working,” said Inu Manak, a fellow for trade policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, during an interview with CBC’s The House that aired Saturday.

On April 2, Trump held up a list in the Rose Garden of the White House and announced what he called “reciprocal tariffs” on more than 150 countries , including China and the European Union. The rates for individual countries on the list varied from 10 per cent to more than 40 per cent.

Canada wasn’t on that list, though other tariffs Trump had previously imposed on Canadian goods remained.

One week after he unveiled the list, the president backed down and said he would freeze the global tariffs for 90 days to allow each country to negotiate deals with his administration.

Trump unveiled a country-by-country tariff list in early April. Canada wasn’t on it, but it continues to face trade penalties that were previously announced. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

The problem for Canada is Trump hasn’t closed many deals in those 90 days, Manak said. So far, the U.S. has reached agreements with Britain and Vietnam. Negotiations with other top markets like China, India, the European Union and Japan are ongoing.

“If we don’t see a lot of deals coming out of this, what we’re likely to see is [Trump] to get more agitated and ask for more concessions from the countries that he knows he can push a little harder,” Manak said. “So I think for Canada, that would be a very bad situation.”

Carlo Dade, international policy director at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, told CBC News “there’s a risk every day of the week that [Trump] decides to come after Canada. That is not an exaggeration.”

“We’re open to this potential as long as the president has unrestrained power to implement tariffs whenever, wherever, however he wants,” he said.

Trump used a law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to apply the worldwide tariffs and his earlier fentanyl tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The law is intended to address “unusual and extraordinary” threats during national emergencies.

In late May, the New York-based U.S. Court of International Trade ruled Trump exceeded his authority by invoking IEEPA . The White House swiftly appealed and a federal appeals court allowed IEEPA tariffs to remain in effect while it reviewed the decision.

WATCH | Europe gets a reprieve on tariffs: Trump delays tariff threat on EU to July Duration 2:52 U.S. President Donald Trump says he will delay his 50 per cent tariff on imports from the European Union until July 9 after a weekend phone call between Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Manak said another challenge is Trump isn’t facing political consequences for his tariffs right now — and no major economic fallout, either.

“Right now, he’s kind of sitting at a point where he feels he can kind of get away with maintaining the pressure that exists. And that pressure is enough to get other countries to the table,” she said.

At a White House news conference at the end of June, Trump told reporters the U.S. “can do whatever we want. We could extend [the July 9 deadline]. We could make it shorter. I’d like to make it shorter.”

On Sunday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested the July 9 deadline is being pushed back by about a month.

He said on CNN’s State of the Union that the Trump administration would send letters to trading partners “saying that if you don’t move things along, then on Aug. 1 you will boomerang back to your April 2 tariff level.”

“So I think we’re going to see a lot of deals very quickly,” Bessent told host Dana Bash. He also said Aug. 1 is “not a new deadline.”

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters Sunday the higher tariffs would take effect on Aug. 1, but Trump was “setting the rates and the deals right now.”

Is there opportunity for Canada?

Fen Osler Hampson, co-chair of the Expert Group on Canada-U.S. Relations at Carleton University, said Canada could leverage the economic uncertainty from Trump’s tariffs and “put the pedal to the metal” to expand trade with European and Asian allies.

Hampson added that Canada already has good trading relationships with those regions through the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

WATCH | Trump isn’t pleased with taunts of ‘chickening out’ on trade: Does Trump ‘always chicken out’ on tariffs? Duration 5:34 Investors are poking fun at U.S. President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff threats, calling it ‘TACO’ trade — which stands for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out.’ When asked about the term, Trump called it a ‘nasty question.’ CBC’s Katie Simpson reports.

With U.S. tariffs, Hampson said those countries are “going to be looking for other market opportunities, both to sell and buy. I think our challenge is to get serious and to realize the real dividends that can come from those two major regional trading agreements.”

Diversifying Canada’s trading partners is one of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s top goals — and a key objective for International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu.

“I think Canada has a lot to offer and we should be screaming that at the top of our lungs,” Sidhu told CBC’s The House in an interview that aired Saturday.

Canada has already deepened its trade relationships with countries such as Ecuador and the United Arab Emirates since Carney and Sidhu came into office.

But key markets that could make a big dent in easing Canada’s reliance on U.S. trade — like the U.K., India and China — are thornier due to fraught diplomatic relationships and other irritants.

Colin Robertson, a former Canadian diplomat and vice-president at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, agreed that Canada can do more trade with other countries, but added a note of caution: businesses, not governments, are the only ones who can decide which companies they trade with.

Minister of International Trade Maninder Sidhu, seen in Ottawa last month, says diversifying Canada’s trading partners is one of his top priorities. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

“Ultimately, business has to see a business opportunity,” Robertson said, adding that the U.S. continues to be the market with the easiest access for Canadian businesses.

On The House, Sidhu told guest host Janyce McGregor that Canadian businesses were indeed comfortable dealing with the U.S., but now they’re asking him to help facilitate access to more countries.

Canada-U.S. trade talks

Carney and Trump continue to negotiate a Canada-U.S. trade deal, after setting a deadline of July 21.

Hampson said the deadline helps Canada hold the Americans’ attention as the Trump administration negotiates with other countries.

The Americans also have an interest in getting a deal done soon, Robertson said.

WATCH | Carney comments on trade talks resuming: Canada and U.S. restarted negotiations Monday morning, Carney says Duration 1:15 Prime Minister Mark Carney says he had a ‘good’ conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday, and that the two leaders will keep working to reach a deal by July 21. The federal government scrapped the digital services tax over the weekend after Trump paused all trade talks.

“If [the Americans] can’t do it with Canada, their ally and their partner, it’s much harder to do with Mexico, much harder with China,” he said. “We should be the lowest of the hanging fruit from the American perspective.”

Trade discussions hit a roadblock in late June when Trump announced he would walk away from the negotiating table over Canada’s digital services tax. The federal government scrapped the tax a few days later and discussions got back on track .

Robertson said he’s a bit skeptical about how far Canada will get with the U.S. by July 21, but adds that Trump enjoys declaring victory even if the agreement is “only 80 per cent of the way there.”

“Would we settle for 80 per cent? Be basically there and leave the rest to be cleaned up? I think so,” he said. “Because if Trump’s taken his eye off it and says it’s basically there, then that’s sufficient from where we’re coming from.”