Trump’s Tariff Letters to World Leaders Are Copied and Pasted
President Donald Trump is spamming world leaders with letters threatening massive tariff hikes if they don’t strike trade deals with Washington as the U.S. blows past its own 90-day deadline for deals with 90 countries. As the letters multiply, it turns out they are partially copied and pasted.
Screenshots of the latest batch of letters were posted on Trump’s Truth Social account on Wednesday, revealing that the administration is using the same template for each country but adjusting the respective country names and tariff rates. “It is a Great Honor for me to send you this letter,” each one begins, before lamenting that despite having “had years to discuss our Trading Relationship,” the relationship has remained “unfortunately, far from Reciprocal.” (One sent to Brazil broke the pattern to start off with a rant about former president Jair Bolsonaro.)
Signed by Trump, the latest letters target mostly minor trading partners — the Philippines, Moldova, Brunei, Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Sri Lanka — while sparing the major ones. The Philippines, the highest-level trade partner on the list, was only ranked 30th in terms of value in 2024. Bigger trading partners, including South Korea and Japan, were hit with identical letters on Monday, bringing the total number sent out this week to 21.
The flurry of threats coincides with the end of the 90-day deadline Trump first set for his trade blitz in April, which came and went on Wednesday with only a handful of the 90 deals predicted by the White House. As of Wednesday afternoon, the only deals signed were with Vietnam and the United Kingdom.
The letters sent this week suggest some countries that didn’t take the bait when Trump first sent them his demands now face the threat of even higher tariffs. The Philippines, for instance, was initially warned of a 17 percent tax on imports to the U.S. back in April, though Trump’s renewed threat on Wednesday bumped the figure up to 20 percent. It’s not clear what factored into the revised figures.
Asked on Wednesday if he’d used any specific “formula” for the tariffs, Trump told a reporter he had used only a “common sense” formula. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Trump had created “tailor-made trade plans for each and every country on this planet.”
While Wednesday marked the original deadline for other countries to make deals with the U.S., Trump signed an executive order earlier this week pushing it back to August 1. Perhaps still stinging a bit from the TACO moniker, for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” popularized by his earlier on-again, off-again tariff deadlines, he went on to insist “no extensions will be granted.”