Banking and Finance Law Daily Wrap Up, VITAL BRIEFING—Trump postpones trading partners’ day of reckoning, again, (Jul 14, 2025)

By Thomas Thompson

Despite saying that “dozens of countries have agreed or offered to lower their tariff rates,” the White House began sending out letters threatening higher tariff rates, including a sharp poke at Brazil, where President Trump assigned a 50 percent tariff rate.

The administration’s approach to tariffs continues to evolve as President Trump’s recent executive order extended the grace period for trading partners to reach deals with U.S. until August 1. In this Vital Briefing, Thomas Thompson provides a summary of developments in connection with the Trump administration’s reciprocal trade negotiations with numerous U.S. trading partners, such as they are. Some of the matters Thompson discusses in the briefing include:

• Emerging details, or lack thereof, regarding the approach the administration is adopting in connection with tariff rates, their interplay with previously imposed tariffs, and applicable timetables.

• Higher tariff levels imposed on goods imported from Brazil as a result of that government’s treatment of its former president, a political ally of President Trump.

• An overview of the more than 20 letters President Trump issued to trading partners which further articulate his disdain for trade surpluses and his view of how unfairly the U.S. has been treated in the foreign trade arena over recent years.

• Growing concerns about the economic and inflationary impacts of the tariffs as expressed by the Federal Reserve’s Jerome Powell, corporate CFOs, as well as the OECD.

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