WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump's sweeping new tariffs went into full effect just after midnight Wednesday.
When Trump announced the latest round of tariffs on April 2, he declared that the US would now tax nearly all of America's trading partners at a minimum of 10 per cent and impose steeper rates for countries that he says run trade surpluses with the US.
The 10 per cent baseline already went into effect Saturday.
Trump's higher import tax rates on dozens of countries and territories took hold at midnight.
The steeper levies run as high as 50 per cent with that biggest rate landing on small economies that trade little with the US, including the African kingdom of Lesotho.
Some other rates include a tax of 47 per cent on imports from Madagascar, 46 per cent on Vietnam, 32 per cent on Taiwan, 25 per cent on South Korea, 24 per cent on Japan and 20 per cent on the European Union.
Some of these new tariffs build on previous trade measures.
Trump last week announced a tariff of 34 per cent on China, for example, which would come on top of 20 per cent levies he imposed on the country earlier this year.
Trump has since threatened to add an another 50 per cent levy on Chinese goods in response to Beijing's recently promised retaliation.
That would bring the combined total to 104 per cent against China.
