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      Markets rebound amid latest US-China tariff spat as traders look to possible ‘Taco trade’

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      European stock markets have edged higher and cryptocurrencies rebounded amid signs that a new front in the US-China trade war may not be a severe as first feared.Tensions between Washington and Beijing escalated again on Friday and over the weekend, as Donald Trump threatened to impose additional US tariffs of 100% on China starting next month.The US president accused the country of “very hostile” moves to restrict exports of rare-earth minerals needed for American industry. Beijing said it would retaliate if Trump does not back down.However, Trump and senior US officials opened a door to a possible deal with China on Sunday. The president wrote on Truth Social: “Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine! Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment. He doesn’t want Depression for his country, and neither do I. The U.S.A. wants to help China, not hurt it!!!”The comments have offered some comfort for investors in Europe, with stocks opening mostly higher on Monday. The UK’s blue-chip FTSE 100 index rose by 0.2% in early trading, while markets in France, Spain, Germany were all up by about 0.5%.Most big cryptocurrencies rebounded after a deep sell-off over the weekend. Bitcoin edged up by 0.3% to more than $115,000, after falling below $105,000 on Friday. Ether had dropped to less than $3,500 but rebounded to about $4,100.Richard Hunter, of the broker Interactive Investor, said investors were hoping for a “Taco trade”, which is the idea that markets rally because “Trump Always Chickens Out” (Taco) of aggressive tariff decisions.“The president’s propensity to shoot from the hip unsettles the investment environment, even though some are already speculating that the Taco trade is alive and well,” he said.However, a heightened sense of uncertainty is pushing investors to gold, which is considered a safe haven asset. Its spot price hit another new high on Monday, rising to as high as $4,078.5 an ounce.Derren Nathan, of the broker Hargreaves Lansdown, noted that US stock futures suggested that there could be “at least a partial rebound” when the market opens later on Monday.“Traders may be banking on a similar pattern where American indexes entered a six-month period of almost unbroken growth helped by a string of trade deals, and growing hopes of a soft-landing for the US economy,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShares in Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca – which made a deal with Trump to lower drug prices and avoid tariffs over the weekend – initially rose on Monday morning, before falling back by 0.4%.Fears were still running high in Asia, with main markets tumbling on Monday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped by 2.3%, while the Taiwanese market fell by 1.4% and the Thai exchange declined by 2%. In mainland China, the Shenzhen exchange fell by 1.4% and the Shanghai market slipped 0.4%.On Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian urged the US to promptly correct its “wrong practices” and said it would act to safeguard its interests.Despite the trade tensions, Chinese exports bounced back in September, topping forecasts as it diversified its markets.Chinese exports rose by 8.3% year on year last month, according to official customs data. This was the fastest growth since March, and beat a 6% increase forecast by economists polled by Reuters. It comes after a 4.4% increase in August. More

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      China warns US of retaliation over Trump’s 100% tariffs threat

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      Beijing has told the US it will retaliate if Donald Trump fails to back down on his threat to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports as investors brace for another bout of trade war turmoil.China’s commerce ministry blamed Washington for raising trade tensions between the two countries after Trump announced on Friday that he would impose the additional tariffs on China’s exports to the US, along with new controls on critical software, by 1 November.“Wilful threats of high tariffs are not the right way to get along with China,” a spokesperson for the commerce ministry said on Sunday, according to the state news agency Xinhua. “China’s position on the trade war is consistent. We do not want it, but we are not afraid of it.“If the United States insists on going the wrong way, China will surely take resolute measures to protect its legitimate rights and interests.”Trump and senior US administration officials opened a door to a China trade deal on Sunday as market futures showed another US stock market drop.“Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine! Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment. He doesn’t want Depression for his country, and neither do I. The U.S.A. wants to help China, not hurt it!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.The message came after JD Vance called on Beijing to “choose the path of reason” in the latest spiralling trade fight between the world’s two leading economies that has shaken stock markets.Dow futures showed a drop of 887 points ahead of the stock markets’ open on Monday. The index dropped sharply lower on Friday after reignited fears of a trade war with China when threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports after China said it would restrict rare earth exports. The Dow fell 879 points, or 1.9%.“It’s going to be a delicate dance, and a lot of it is going to depend on how the Chinese respond,” Vance said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures. “If they respond in a highly aggressive manner, I guarantee you, the president of the United States has far more cards than the People’s Republic of China. If, however, they’re willing to be reasonable,” he said, then the US would, too.The US president shocked the financial markets on Friday when he accused China of “very hostile” moves to restrict exports of rare-earth materials needed by US industry.It prompted heavy falls on Wall Street, where about $2tn (£1.5tn) was wiped off the value of the US stocks.China insisted on Sunday that its latest export controls on rare earths such as holmium, erbium, thulium, europium and ytterbium were legitimate.“China’s export controls are not export bans,” said the commerce ministry spokesperson. “All applications of compliant export for civil use can get approval, so that relevant businesses have no need to worry.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe measures were introduced after Washington added a number of Chinese firms to its export control list in a crackdown on the use of foreign affiliates to circumvent export curbs on chipmaking equipment and other goods and technology.The UK’s FTSE 100 share index fell almost 1% on Friday as Trump’s threat sparked a late selloff. The futures market indicates there could be further losses in London and New York on Monday, although there could also be relief that Beijing has not yet retaliated.Bitcoin, which had tumbled 8% after Trump’s post on Truth Social, rose by 4% on Sunday after China refrained from retaliating.Trump’s tariff threat was “a rather unwelcome development for financial markets” as investors had “by and large moved on from the trade and tariff story”, said Michael Brown, a senior research strategist at the brokerage firm Pepperstone.“Chiefly, the question that every man and his dog are attempting to answer is whether this is a credible threat, that the Trump admin might follow through on, or whether this is another example of the ‘escalate to de-escalate’ strategy that Trump used so frequently earlier in the year.“A strategy where outlandish and ridiculous tariff figures are threatened, in an attempt to focus minds, extract concessions from the other party, and ultimately come to agreement faster than otherwise might’ve been possible.” More

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      US farmers caught in Trump-China trade war – who’ll buy the soybeans?

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      At the Purfeerst farm in southern Minnesota, the soybean harvest just wrapped up for the season. The silver grain bins are full of about 100,000 bushels of soybeans, which grab about $10 a piece.This year, though, the fate of the soybeans, and the people whose livelihoods depend on selling them, is up in the air: America’s soybean farmers are stuck in the middle of a trade war between the US and China, the biggest purchaser of soybean exports, used to feed China’s pigs.“We are gonna have to find a home for them soybeans some time soon,” said Matt Purfeerst, a fifth-generation farmer on the family’s land. “They won’t stay in our bins for ever.”No other country comes close to purchasing as many American soybeans as China – last year, it was more than $12bn worth. This year, the country has not purchased a single dollar’s worth, cutting off the country that makes up about half of US soybean exports.While Trump has said he intends some sort of payment to go to soybean farmers hurt by tariffs, an announcement of a specific plan is on hold while the government is shut down. He said in a Truth Social post last week that he would be meeting with the Chinese president soon and “soybeans will be a major topic of discussion”.The White House cast blame on Democrats for the government shutdown for the delay in a response to the Guardian on Wednesday, erroneously claiming they were prioritizing healthcare for migrants over farmers.View image in fullscreen“President Trump, [Treasury] Secretary [Scott] Bessent, and [Agriculture] Secretary [Brooke] Rollins are always in touch about the needs of our farmers, who played a crucial role in the president’s November victory,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress have stalled progress on this issue with their prolonged shutdown to serve illegal immigrants instead of America’s farmers. No decisions have been made, but we look forward to sharing good news soon.”Purfeerst’s family farm grows soybeans and corn, and has some beef cattle. The job is a round-the-clock combination of engineering, business, manual labor, environmental science. And it’s increasingly hard for family farms to make it. Costs for propane, fertilizer and seed have gone up, he said, and the prices for the goods they are selling don’t make up for the increased costs.Soybean farmers have become the “poster child out there right now of how this one particular segment’s getting hurt”, he said. The farm recently welcomed the Democratic US senator Amy Klobuchar for a visit to talk about how the tariffs were playing out, but Purfeerst said political affiliations didn’t matter.“Only 1% of the population is even involved in [agriculture] any more,” he said. “And what gets really challenging is this perception of ag out there, whether it’s on tariffs and prices or environmental issues, farmers kind of seem to be the crosshairs of a lot of it.”Farming areas voted for Trump in 2024, as did much of rural America. One analysis, by Investigate Midwest, showed Trump growing his support among farming-dependent counties in 2024 despite a trade war during his first term that negatively affected farmers.“I’m not gonna get into who I voted for particularly, but I would just have to say, at the time, you got to make decisions who you think is going to be the best leader of the country, and go on with life,” Purfeerst said. “And in four years, you get to vote again. That’s the beauty of our society. It’s not an 80-year regime. It’s a four-year cycle. It’s hard to say what’s gonna come about. I mean, everyone’s got their pros and cons.”View image in fullscreenPurfeerst has options for his soybeans: because of his farm’s location, he can sell domestically to soybean crush facilities in nearby towns, sell on the rail market, or sell in Minneapolis and put product on barges down the Mississippi River. Other soybean farmers, especially those in more remote parts of the midwest where soybeans are mostly produced, aren’t as lucky.Stories from all parts of the country where soybeans are grown have surfaced in recent weeks – in Arkansas, Illinois, Nebraska, Indiana, the Dakotas. Farmers face higher costs for inputs like fertilizer and equipment. They rely on China as a purchaser. Soybeans sitting in bins too long is subject to weather and pests. The prices fluctuate, so it’s a gamble to hold on to it that sometimes can pay off, or sometimes lose money.“Let’s say tomorrow we get a trade deal with China, and it’s favorable to soybeans. All of a sudden you might see this market jump from $10 to $12 in three, four days,” Purfeerst said. “So it makes it extremely challenging from a risk management standpoint of: when do you market your crop, and how many eggs do you put in that basket? The potential is $12, but if we don’t get a trade deal, it could go to $9 … There’s a huge volatility in soybeans.”The soybean industry has been warning for months that China’s exit from the market would be devastating, calling on the Trump administration to come up with a trade deal that spares farmers. The American Soybean Association wrote a letter to Trump in August, saying the country’s soybean farmers were “standing at a trade and financial precipice” and “cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute with our largest customer”.Tim Walz, Minnesota’s Democratic governor, declared the first week of October as soybean week, saying in the announcement that “our soybean farmers are confronting a crisis they haven’t seen since the 1980s”.“They’ve produced a bumper crop this year, just to find out they have nowhere to sell their harvest thanks to Trump’s trade policies,” Walz said. “Minnesota’s got the best beans in the world – I encourage Minnesotans to stand with our farmers and continue to advocate for federal trade reform.”It’s not the first time a Trump trade plan has hurt soybean farmers: in 2018, a trade war led to significant reductions in soybean exports to China. Since then, the market has rebounded, though China has ramped up soybean purchases from Brazil and Argentina, stockpiling imports earlier this year.Republican lawmakers have said they are sympathetic to the farmers and want to find a way to help them. James Comer, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, said this week that soybean farmers were not to blame for the problem they are facing.“They planted that crop assuming that those foreign markets were going to be there,” Comer said in a recent TV appearance. “I think we need to do something to help the soybean farmers.”A bailout is “really just a Band-Aid”, though it’s one that many farmers would welcome as they are getting squeezed right now, Purfeerst said. Most farmers would prefer an open market, without tariffs, for their products, letting the market dictate prices. They don’t want the trade war now to affect a long-term relationship that makes up a significant chunk of market share. There also should be more emphasis put on increasing domestic uses of soybeans, though a long-range plan like that won’t help the farmers who are stuck right now, he said.“There’s farms that are struggling to make money on soybean acres, and you’ve got to remember: whatever payment we’re getting, whatever that dollar amount might be, if we get anything, it’s not just going in our back pocket,” he said. “We’ve got a fertilizer bill. We’ve got to pay the seed bill. There’s a lot of payments. So really, that money might be in the farmer’s hands for a month, until it gets spent on inputs for next year.” More

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      Chinese executive jailed for 25 years in US for trafficking fentanyl chemicals

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      A Chinese company executive has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for trafficking in chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl, the US justice department has said.Qingzhou Wang, 37, principal executive of Amarvel Biotech, a company based in Wuhan, and Yiyi Chen, 33, the firm’s marketing manager, were convicted in New York in February of fentanyl precusor importation and money laundering.District judge Paul Gardephe sentenced Wang to 25 years in prison on Friday. Chen was sentenced to 15 years in prison on 22 August.“These executives turned a Chinese chemical company into a pipeline of poison, shipping hundreds of kilos of fentanyl-related precursors into the United States, disguising them as everyday goods, and cashing in through cryptocurrency,” Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief Terrance Cole said in a statement.Wang and Chen were among eight Chinese nationals and four Chinese companies charged by the justice department in June 2023 with trafficking fentanyl precursor chemicals into the US.It was the first time the United States had charged Chinese companies for trafficking fentanyl precursor chemicals inside the United States, rather than shipping them to Mexico, the origin of most of the fentanyl found in the country.Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more powerful than heroin and much easier and cheaper to produce. It has largely replaced heroin and prescription opioids such as oxycodone as a cause of overdoses in the United States.The June 2023 indictment of the Chinese executives and companies drew protests from Beijing.“It is completely illegal and seriously damages the basic human rights of Chinese citizens and Chinese companies,” the Chinese foreign ministry said at the time. “China strongly condemns this.”Although Mexico has been the main source of fentanyl sold in the United States, Washington has increasingly focused its attention on China-based suppliers of ingredients. More

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      Trump insists foreign workers are ‘welcome’ days after arrest of hundreds of South Koreans

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      President Donald Trump has said foreign workers sent to the United States are “welcome” and he doesn’t want to “frighten off” investors, 10 days after hundreds of South Koreans were arrested at a work site in Georgia.In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote: “I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize investment.“I want them to bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people how to make these very unique and complex products, as they phase out of our Country, and back into their land,” he wrote.About 475 people, mostly South Korean nationals, were arrested at the construction site of an electric vehicle battery factory, operated by Hyundai-LG, in the south-eastern US state of Georgia on 4 September.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials alleged South Koreans had overstayed their visas or held permits that didn’t allow them to perform manual labor.The Georgia raid was the largest single-site operation conducted since Trump launched a sweeping immigration crackdown across the country.Though the US decided against deportation, images of the workers being chained and handcuffed during the raid caused widespread alarm in South Korea. Seoul repatriated the workers on Friday.The South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung, called the raid “bewildering” and warned on Thursday that the raid could discourage future investment.In his post, Trump described the circumstances for temporarily allowing foreign experts into the US to build “extremely complex products”.“Chips, Semiconductors, Computers, Ships, Trains, and so many other products that we have to learn from others how to make, or, in many cases, relearn because we used to be great at it, but not anymore,” Trump wrote.“We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them, and do even better than them at their own ‘game,’ sometime in the not too distant future,” the president added.Korea’s trade unions have called on Trump to issue an official apology. More

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      From ‘hellhole’ UK to anti-Muslim rhetoric in Japan, Charlie Kirk took his message abroad

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      Charlie Kirk directed most of his rhetoric at the US political scene, but he also strayed into foreign affairs, drawing both favourable and critical comparisons between life in the US and in other countries on his shows and doing the occasional speaking tour.In May, Kirk visited the UK, debating against students at Oxford and Cambridge universities and appearing on the conservative GB News channel. Days before he was fatally shot in Utah he took his message to relatively new audiences on a tour to South Korea and Japan.Last weekend he addressed like-minded politicians and activists at a symposium in Tokyo organised by Sanseito, a rightwing populist party that shook up the political establishment in upper house elections this summer.In Tokyo, Kirk described Sanseito, which ran in July’s elections on a “Japanese first” platform, as “all about kicking foreigners out of Japan”, where the foreign population has risen to about 3.8 million out of a total of 124 million.Foreign residents and supporters of mass migration were, he claimed, “very quietly and secretly funnelling themselves into Japanese life. They want to erase, replace and eradicate Japan by bringing in Indonesians, by bringing in Arabs, by bringing in Muslims”.He spoke at length about his trip in a podcast released the day before his death, returning to a familiar theme – criticising women who choose not to have children – that echoed the views of his host in Japan, the Sanseito leader, Sohei Kamiya.In Seoul, he addressed more than 2,000 supporters at the Build Up Korea 2025 event, which drew predominantly young Christians and students from evangelical schools, representing a self-styled Korean Maga movement that has rallied in support of the impeached former president Yoon Suk Yeol.The event invited a host of far-right American personalities, who openly promoted conspiracy theories including claims that China orchestrated “stolen elections” in both America and South Korea, and that Lee Jae Myung’s recent presidential victory was fraudulent.Kirk criticised special prosecutor investigations into Yoon and his martial law, describing “several disturbing things happening right now in South Korea” where “pastors are being arrested” and “homes are being raided”, adding: “If South Korea keeps on acting like this, it is the American way to step up and fight for what is right.”Kirk said he had “learned a lot” from his time in South Korea and Japan, recalling how safe he had felt on the clean and orderly streets of Seoul, where there were “no bums, no one asking you for money”.In his three-day visit to the UK in May, he clashed with students at the Cambridge Union debating society, arguing that “lockdowns were unnecessary”, “life begins at conception”, and the US Civil Rights Act was a “mistake”.Kirk made the same points in Oxford, also alleging immigrants were “importing insidious values into the west” and that police violence against Black people was a result of a “disproportionate crime problem” in the Black community.He told the rightwing GB News that the UK was a “husk” of its former self and needed to “get its mojo back”. The perception among US conservatives, he said, was that “this is increasingly a conquered country … We love this country from afar, and we’re really sad about what’s happening to it, and what has happened to it”.On his first show after returning to the US, Kirk described the UK as a “totalitarian third world hellhole”, adding: “It’s tragic. I don’t say that with glib, I don’t say that with delight. It is sad. It’s chilling and it’s depressing.”He claimed he had seen a cafe in which “every single table was taken by a Mohammedan and a fully burqa-wearing woman – not a single native Brit” and that people were being arrested for online posts that displayed no apparent harmful intent.“They invented free speech,” he said. “Now there’s so much wrong with that country and it is not worthy of making fun of. I mean, you can have some laughs and some comedy, but it is depressing. It is dark.”View image in fullscreenWhile he was fond of referencing Europe in his shows, Kirk’s only other recent public visit there appears to have been a trip to Greenland in January in the company of Donald Trump Jr.He said afterwards that Greenlanders should be allowed to “use personal autonomy and agency to disconnect from their Danish masters”, then have “the opportunity to be part of the US, no different than either Puerto Rico or Guam” (two self-governing “unincorporated territories” of the US) in order to be “wealthier, richer … and protected”.Kirk was also sharply critical of many countries in his videos and podcasts. “France has basically become a joke, for a lot of reasons,” he said last year, amid widespread French protests over pension changes. “What’s happening in France should serve as a warning to America.”After JD Vance attacked Europe for alleged free speech shortcomings this year, Kirk hit out at Germany. “Germans are a bunch of troublemakers,” he said. “German prosecutors say someone can be locked up if they insult someone online. Free speech is not a German value. Totalitarianism is a German value.”He was a vocal supporter of Trump’s China-focused policies, backing the president’s attacks on Harvard University in April, and the punishing trade war with Beijing.In April, he claimed Harvard had “raked in” more than $100m from China. “We need to ask serious questions in this country about whether we can trust our elite universities to put America first when so much money is flowing to them from America’s number one rival.”The same month, he told Fox News the US had become “a glorified vassal state” subservient to the Chinese Communist party, by relying on China for rare earth minerals. He said the CCP wanted to create “lots of little colonies all around the world through the belt and road initiative”.He also waded into the complicated waters of cross-strait relations. In April, Kirk told his podcast he had “a soft spot for the people of Taiwan”, but also showed a limited understanding of its history and the complexities of the dispute.“I would say, sadly if we took Taiwan, it would probably start a nuclear war. Our leaders have largely mishandled China. We probably should have taken it in 1950 right after world war two,” he said.There has never been any discussion of the US “taking” Taiwan. The US is Taiwan’s most important backer, providing billions of dollars in weapons and some military training, and has not ruled out coming to its defence in the event of a Chinese attack or invasion.In a video in May, Kirk used the escalating hostilities between India and Pakistan to push his argument against US military intervention abroad. Describing Pakistan as a “very, very sneaky actor”, Kirk was emphatic that “very simply, this is not our war … This is a great test of whether every great conflict is America’s problem”.Kirk was equally dogmatic on the issue of Indians being granted more visas as part of a US-India trade deal, accusing Indians of taking American jobs.“America does not need more visas for people from India,” he said. “Perhaps no form of legal immigration has so displaced American workers as those from India. Enough already. We’re full. Let’s finally put our own people first.” More

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      Trump says he wants to meet with Kim Jong-un as South Korea’s Lee Jae Myung visits US

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      Donald Trump said on Monday he wanted to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and that he was open to further trade talks with South Korea even as he lobbed new criticisms at the visiting Asian ally.South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae Myung, arrived for talks just after the US president criticized the South Korean government, apparently over its handling of investigations related to his conservative predecessor’s December attempt to impose martial law.The remarks cast a dark mood over high-stakes talks for Lee, who took office in June after a snap election that followed Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and removal.Welcoming Lee to the White House’s Oval Office, Trump said he was open to negotiating aspects of the US-South Korean trade deal and to meeting Kim.“I’d like to have a meeting,” Trump told reporters. “I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong-un in the appropriate future.“Trump and Lee held their first meeting in tense circumstances. The US president lodged vague complaints about a “purge or revolution” in South Korea on social media before later walking the comments back as a likely “misunderstanding” between the allies.Despite clinching a trade deal in July that spared South Korean exports harsher US tariffs, the two sides continue to wrangle over nuclear energy, military spending and details of a trade deal that included $350bn in promised South Korean investments in the United States.North Korea’s rhetoric has ramped up, with Kim pledging to speed his nuclear program and condemning joint US-South Korea military drills. Over the weekend, Kim supervised the test firing of new air defense systems.Since Trump’s January inauguration, Kim has ignored Trump’s repeated calls to revive the direct diplomacy he pursued during his 2017-2021 term in office, which produced no deal to halt North Korea’s nuclear program. In the Oval Office, Lee avoided the theatrical confrontations that dominated a February visit by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, and a May visit from Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president.Lee, deploying a well-worn strategy by foreign visitors to the Trump White House, talked golf and lavished praise on the Republican president’s interior decorating and peacemaking. He told reporters earlier that he had read the president’s 1987 memoir, Trump: The Art of the Deal, to prepare.As the leaders met, the liberal South Korean encouraged Trump to engage with North Korea.“I hope you can bring peace to the Korean Peninsula, the only divided nation in the world, so that you can meet with Kim Jong-un, build a Trump World [real-estate complex] in North Korea so that I can play golf there, and so that you can truly play a role as a world-historical peacemaker,” Lee said, speaking in Korean.South Korea’s economy relies heavily on the US, with Washington underwriting its security with troops and nuclear deterrence. Trump has called Seoul a “money machine” that takes advantage of American military protection. More

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      White House to end US tariff exemption for all low-value overseas packages

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      The United States is suspending a “de minimis” exemption that allowed low-value commercial shipments to be shipped to the United States without facing tariffs, the White House said on Wednesday.Under an executive order signed by Donald Trump on Wednesday, packages valued at or under $800 sent to the US outside of the international postal network will now face “all applicable duties” starting on 29 August, the White House said.The US president earlier targeted packages from China and Hong Kong, and the White House said the recently signed tax and spending bill repealed the legal basis for the de minimis exemption worldwide starting on 1 July 2027.“Trump is acting more quickly to suspend the de minimis exemption than the OBBBA requires, to deal with national emergencies and save American lives and businesses now,” the White House said in a fact sheet, referring to the bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.Goods shipped through the postal system will face one of two tariffs: either an “ad valorem duty” equal to the effective tariff rate of the package’s country of origin or, for six months, a specific tariff of $80 to $200 depending on the country of origin’s tariff rate. More