REAL ECONOMY BLOG | March 26, 2025

Last month, United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer laid out a list of countries that are likely to be targeted with selected tariffs, which are scheduled to take effect on April 2. Those economies account for approximately 88% of total goods trade with the U.S.

Since the U.S. runs a large services surplus with its trading partners, we expect that targeted list to focus on countries with which the U.S runs a goods deficit or those that have elevated tariffs or non-tariff barriers that the U.S. would like dismantled.

On Tuesday, Greer told Republican senators that the on-again, off-again tariff policies would have more clarity after April 2 and would be reciprocal against countries that imposed trade barriers on U.S. products, Politico reported. .

More recently, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noted that there was a focus on the “dirty fifteen” economies that run large trade deficits with the U.S. as the administration seeks to narrow the $1.2 trillion U.S. trade deficit.

So far this year, the administration has imposed a 20% trade tax on Chinese imports, applied 25% tariffs on global steel and aluminum imports and 25% taxes on imports from Canada and Mexico that are noncompliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

While we think the economies in the above data visualization figure to be the primary targets of the new tariffs, the U.S. trade representative has also named Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the European Union, Great Britain, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey as additional possible targets.

From our vantage point, total trade balance plus capital inflows equals zero and the current global trade framework favors the U.S. for the most part.

It’s equally clear that policymakers do not share our views. And for this reason, all firms with exposure to imports should prepare for notable hikes in import taxes.