Trump aides said to be preparing more targeted tariffs

According to the Washington Post, which cited three people familiar with the matter, the tariffs would be applied to every country but only cover critical imports. This marks a key shift from Trump's plans during the 2024 presidential campaign.

As a candidate, Trump had called for "universal" tariffs of as high as 10% or 20% on everything imported into the US. Many economists warned that such plans could cause price shocks, and many Republicans in Congress had criticised them.

According the Post, two weeks before Trump takes office, his aides are still discussing plans to impose import duties on goods from every country. However, sources told the paper that rather than apply tariffs to all imports, the current discussions centre on imposing them only on certain sectors deemed critical to national or economic security.

Exactly which imports or industries would face tariffs was not immediately clear. It was understood that preliminary discussions have largely focused on several key sectors that the Trump team wants to bring back to the US.

Those include the defence industrial supply chain (through tariffs on steel, iron, aluminium and copper); critical medical supplies (syringes, needles, vials and pharmaceutical materials); and energy production (batteries, rare earth minerals and even solar panels), two of the people told the newspaper.

It’s also unclear how these plans intersect with Trump’s stated intent to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada and an additional 10% tariff on China unless they take measures to reduce migration and drug trafficking.

Many business leaders view those measures as unlikely to ever take effect, but the Washington Post said some people familiar with the matter said they could be imposed along with universal tariffs on key sectors.