U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest trade actions have produced a rapid-fire series of tariff announcements, suspensions and renegotiations that have unsettled financial markets and injected fresh uncertainty into the global economy. A Reuters timeline published on 1 August 2025 traces these moves from February through July, noting that the White House has repeatedly shifted its strategy—sometimes within days—to extract concessions on issues ranging from fentanyl trafficking to immigration and “anti-American” foreign alignments.
In the early months, Trump opened hostilities by imposing 25 % duties on most Mexican and Canadian goods and 10 % on Chinese imports (1 Feb.), temporarily pausing some North American levies two days later but escalating steel and aluminium tariffs to a flat 25 % by 10 Feb. Further measures included a 25 % tariff on imported cars (26 Mar.) and a blanket 10 % tariff across nearly all U.S. imports on 2 Apr. Although a 90-day suspension of country-specific penalties followed on 9 Apr., the administration simultaneously hiked effective tariffs on Chinese products to an extraordinary 145 %.
From May onward the campaign intensified. A limited U.K. trade accord left most duties intact (9 May); a temporary U.S.–China truce reduced reciprocal surcharges but still kept rates far above pre-war levels (12 May). Trump threatened Apple with a 25 % device tariff (23 May), doubled steel and aluminium duties to 50 % (3 Jun.) and targeted Vietnamese exports and BRICS-aligned nations with new levies in July. Successive deals with Japan, the EU and South Korea trimmed some planned hikes, yet by 31 July the president had signed an executive order extending tariffs of 10-41 % to 69 trading partners while granting Mexico a brief reprieve—setting the stage for even broader barriers from 1 August onward.