Trump makes new tariff threats from the Philippines to Moldova as his trade letter tally reaches 20

Donald Trump released another round of letters to trade partners Wednesday that didn’t include updates on negotiated deals but offered new threats of rates ranging from 20% to 30% on nations from the Philippines to Moldova set to take effect on Aug. 1.

The entire list of six letters released Wednesday morning so far includes 30% rates for Algeria, Iraq, and Libya; 25% rates for Brunei and Moldova; and a 20% rate for the Philippines.

The list focused on lower-level trading partners. The Philippines was the biggest announcement Wednesday, but that nation ranks about 30th in US trading partners by value, according to US government data.

The rates continued a trend of rates being announced this week that largely tracked what was first announced in April, with some alterations. The Philippines, for example, saw its proposed rate jump slightly from 17% to 20%.

This latest flurry of pronouncements comes on top of 14 letters issued Monday and during a week that has seen a surge in bellicose new rhetoric from the president.

Markets have largely ignored the news after one of the first moves from the president this week was to push ahead his “reciprocal” tariff deadlines by about three weeks via executive action.

“Trade negotiations take time, and the notion you’re going to be simultaneously negotiating with dozens of countries just really limits the bandwidth of the negotiating teams,” Wendy Cutler, a former trade negotiator currently at the Asia Society, said in a live Yahoo Finance appearance Wednesday.

“August 1 now is the next deadline,” she added, “and even though the president is saying there’ll be no more further extensions, I think our trading partners are beginning to realize that this may go on and on and on.”

Also damping the potential effect was that Wednesday’s series of letters — which appeared in sequence on Truth Social starting at a little after 11:30 a.m. ET — lacked any signs of progress on deals with India and the EU, as arrangements with two of the US’s top trading partners remain outstanding.

The chances of a deal with Europe got more complicated after Trump said on Tuesday, “We are probably two days off from sending them a letter.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered early Wednesday morning that Europe would continue to negotiate, but “we get ready for all scenarios.”

It was the first of two promised releases on Wednesday, with Trump promising “an additional number of Countries being released in the afternoon.”