WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump ordered 100-percent tariffs on certain branded pharmaceutical imports and overhauled steel, aluminum and copper duties on Thursday as his administration sought to move on from the collapse of the broad global tariffs he announced exactly one year ago.
The new tranche of tariffs is aimed partly at rebuilding duties lost when the Supreme Court struck them down in February. But they drew criticism from some business groups for adding potential new cost pressures at a time when the war on Iran has spiked energy prices for consumers.
In a new proclamation revealing the results of a long-awaited national security investigation, Trump said foreign manufacturers of patented products must agree to make deals with the US to cut prescription-drug prices and commit to moving production to the United States.
They must do both to avoid tariffs altogether and will face a 20-percent tariff if they simply move some manufacturing to the US, according to an administration official. Those who do neither face a 100-percent duty.
The tariffs will not apply to drug imports from all countries. Branded drug tariffs will be capped at 15 percent under trade deals with the European Union, Japan, South Korea and Switzerland.
The US and Britain also finalized a separate pharmaceuticals tariff deal that guarantees zero tariffs on British-made pharmaceuticals for at least three years as Britain builds out production in the United States.
An administration official said large pharmaceutical companies would have 120 days to comply before the 100-percent tariff rates kicked in, and smaller producers would have 180 days.
Metals rate reduced
Trump also issued a separate metals tariff proclamation that halved the duty to 25 percent on many derivative products made with steel, aluminum and copper, and dropped them altogether on products with minimal metals content.
The move kept in place the 50-percent duty on commodity imports of steel, aluminum and copper. But according to the official, the Trump administration will now apply this rate to the US sales price of the metals and not the declared import value, which the official said had often been kept artificially low.
The metals changes are aimed at simplifying an overly complicated tariff regime that gave importers headaches in trying to determine the value of the metal content of thousands of derivative products.
Products with metals content of less than 15 percent by weight, such as a dental floss container with a tiny steel blade, will no longer be subject to the tariffs. The White House also said it would cut duties on certain metal-intensive industrial and power grid equipment to 15 percent from 50 percent through 2027.
The change in the metals tariffs would be effective just after midnight on Monday, the order said.
The changes came on the one-year anniversary of Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcements of “reciprocal tariffs” ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent on imports from all trading partners and even some uninhabited islands.
This kicked off months of retaliation from China, trade negotiations with other countries and court challenges from importers.
The US Supreme Court in February declared the tariffs illegal, prompting a lower court order for the US Customs and Border Protection agency to devise a plan to refund some $166 billion in tariffs collected over a year.