Donald Trump tariff update: US President says some countries may get a break from tariffs, including Australia

US President Donald Trump says he may give a “lot of countries” breaks on tariffs and that he plans to announce more tariffs on cars in the next few days.

“We’ll be announcing some additional tariffs over the next few days, having to do with automobiles, cars, and having also to do with lumber down the road - lumber and chips,” Mr Trump said during a press conference announcing Hyundai’s plan to build a plant in Louisiana.

He said earlier on Monday that he will in the very near future announce tariffs on cars, aluminium and pharmaceuticals.

While speaking to reporters at the White House, Mr Trump said the United States would need all those products if there were problems including wars.

“We’ve been ripped off by every country,” Mr Trump said as he presided over a meeting of his cabinet.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, speaking at the same meeting, said that on April 2, which Mr Trump has targeted to impose a slew of tariffs, the United States will launch what he called “the external revenue service”.

The US Internal Revenue Service collects taxes from US citizens.

Mr Trump was likely to exclude a set of sector-specific tariffs while applying reciprocal levies on April 2, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported earlier, but an administration official on Monday cautioned that the situation was fluid and no final decisions had been made.

Mr Trump himself will ultimately determine the contents of the April 2 announcement, which he has touted as “Liberation Day” for the US economy.

The action aims to shrink a $US1.2 trillion ($A1.9 trillion) global goods trade deficit by raising US tariffs to levels charged by other countries and counteracting their non-tariff trade barriers.

Mr Trump, who has said countries can still avoid tariffs if they lower their own tariff rates or move manufacturing to the US, also announced a $US21 billion investment by South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group in the United States at the White House on Monday.

The president said in February that he intended to impose car tariffs “in the neighbourhood of 25 per cent” and similar duties on semiconductors and pharmaceutical imports but he later agreed to delay some car tariffs after a push by the three largest US car makers for a waiver.

Mr Trump’s whirlwind tariff offensive since his January inauguration has been marked by threats, reversals and delays, sometimes within hours of imposition deadlines, as his trade team formulates policy on the fly.

Thus far, he has imposed new 20 per cent duties on Chinese imports, fully restored 25 per cent duties on global steel and aluminium imports and slapped 25 per cent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico that do not comply with a North American trade agreement over the US fentanyl overdose crisis.

Two senior Trump officials - Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and top White House Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett - said last week that the administration is expected to focus the much anticipated April 2 reciprocal tariff announcement on a narrower set of countries with the biggest trade surpluses and high tariff and non-tariff barriers.

Mr Bessent referred to these as the “Dirty 15” a reference to 15 per cent of countries while Mr Hassett told Fox Business the focus would be on 10-15 countries.

In a request for public comments on reciprocal tariffs, USTR said it was particularly interested in submissions for the largest US trade partners, and those with the highest goods trade surpluses.

USTR named Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Vietnam as being of particular interest, adding that they cover 88 per cent of total goods trade with the US.

Mr Trump said on Monday that any country buying oil or gas from Venezuela will pay a 25 per cent tariff on trades with the United States, while his administration extended a deadline for US producer Chevron to wind down operations in the South American country.

Punishment through tariffs for foreign buyers of Venezuela’s oil could have a similar effect to secondary sanctions on Venezuela that were imposed under Mr Trump’s first government in 2020 and hit the OPEC country’s exports, forcing price discounts.