By ELEONORE HUGHES RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) Brazilian Vice President Geraldo Alckmin said Saturday that Brazilian exported goods to the U.S. including coffee, beef and tropical fruits would still be tariffed 40%, despite President Donald Trump's decision to remove some import taxes. In a dramatic move on Friday, Trump scrapped levies announced in April on what he called Liberation Day' in hopes of encouraging domestic production and lifting the U.S. economy.
The Supreme Court could decide on the legality of many of the Trump administration's tariffs within months, but the ruling won't impact many of the administration's levies on imported construction materials such as lumber, steel, aluminum and copper. The case before the Supreme Court contests the legality of the president's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to enact sweeping tariffs on almost every country, including the reciprocal Liberation Day levies announced on April 2.
With all of these deals, the ones in Asia, the ones we're announcing today, we maintain the tariffs, we give some tariff relief on certain products or goods, but at the same time, we open up foreign markets in ways that they have not been open before,
New figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the value of UK exports to the US fell by £500 million in September, an 11.4% drop month on month, taking trade back to levels last seen in January 2022. The ONS said exports have "remained relatively low since the introduction of tariffs in April", when the Trump administration imposed a 10% baseline tariff on most UK goods.
In October, the Trump administration secured new trade deals with Malaysia, Cambodia, and Thailand that included a call for a permanent end to tariffs and taxes on digital goods and online services. The agreements reaffirm the United States' long-standing position that digital commerce - software, streaming, cloud storage, and similar services - should flow freely across borders, untaxed and unrestricted.
The consolidated cases, Learning Resources v. Trump and Trump v. VOS Selections, challenge Trump's claim that he has the power to issue tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which permits the president to regulate transactions involving any property in which any foreign country or national thereof has any interest, in order to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat.
Bessent temporarily punted to address another question from Stephanopoulos about whether Trump undermined his administration's own legal argument in favor of the tariffs that their primary purpose is not to generate revenue by focusing on the money they're purportedly bringing in. It's not about taking in the revenue, it's about re-balancing, Bessent said. And the revenue occurs early on. And then as we rebalance and the jobs come home, then it becomes domestic tax revenue.
Just Sunday morning, he promised tariffs would pay down the national debt and fund a $2,000 dividend for most Americans. Administration officials have frequently talked about tariff receipts of up to $1 trillion a year offsetting deficits a decade from now. The big picture: The tension about tariffs' true purpose was evident at the Supreme Court this week, as the government attempted to defend Trump's authority to impose them.
