U.S. President Donald Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Tesla CEO Elon Musk attend a cabinet meeting at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 24, 2025.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
President Donald Trump on Monday said he will soon announce tariffs targeting automobiles, pharmaceuticals and other industries, signaling his plans to pile more sweeping duties on top of his forthcoming “reciprocal tariffs.”
“We’ll be announcing cars very shortly,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting. “We already announced steel, as you know, and aluminum.”
“We’ll be announcing pharmaceuticals at some point,” he said, “because we have to have pharmaceuticals.”
“So we’ll be announcing some of these things in the very near future, not the long future, the very near future,” Trump said.
Trump later added the lumber and semiconductor industries to his list.
“We’ll be announcing some additional tariffs over the next few days, having to do with automobiles, cars, and having also to do a little bit with lumber down the road, lumber and chips,” he said at another event in the White House later Monday.
It was unclear whether the newly announced sector-specific tariffs would take effect after the tit-for-tat tariffs, which are set to start April 2.
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the White House was likely to exclude industry-specific tariffs from the April 2 batch, despite Trump’s suggestion a week earlier that both types of tariffs would start the same day.
The president’s latest comments came hours after he vowed to slap 25% tariffs on all countries that buy oil and gas from Venezuela.
“We’ve been ripped off by every country in the world,” Trump said in the meeting.
“We did something with Venezuela, which is long in the making,” he said. “And we’ll be announcing cars very shortly.”
A White House official told CNBC earlier Monday that the tariffs targeting specific sectors “may happen or may not.”
“No final decision’s been made as far as sectoral being tacked onto reciprocal,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Major stock indexes shot up Monday following the reports that Trump may be softening his tariff plans.
The official did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for additional comment following Trump’s remarks in the Cabinet meeting.
This is developing news. Please check back for updates.