Trump Team Weighs Broader, Higher Tariffs

Back on the table ahead of Wednesday's deadline: an across-the-board hike of up to 20%

- Gavin Bade, Alex Leary & Kristina Peterson

The Trump administration is scrambling to determine the specifics of its new tariff agenda ahead of its self-imposed deadline of Wednesday, weighing options as the president has promised to remake the American economy with a swath of new levies.

One key point of debate is whether to impose individualized tariff rates for U.S. trading partners, as President Trump has previewed in recent weeks, or revert to his campaign pledge for an across-the-board tariff that would affect virtually every country doing business with the U.S., say people familiar with the conversations.

Trump spent most of last week playing down expectations for his so-called reciprocal tariff plan on April 2, a line he reiterated on Air Force One on Sunday night, saying he would be "much more generous" than his previous pledges to equalize U.S. tariffs with those charged by other nations.

But in recent days Trump has pushed his team to be more aggressive, people familiar with the conversations said, encouraging them to devise plans that would apply higher rates of tariffs on a broader set of countries. Trump reinforced that narrative on Sunday night, saying he would target "essentially all" of U.S. trading partners with tariffs of some kind.

Exactly how that will happen remains unclear. In recent days, advisers have considered imposing global tariffs of up to 20% that would hit virtually all U.S. trading partners.

Trump and his team for months promoted such a plan on the campaign trail, before the president publicly ditched it in favor of a so-called reciprocal tariff plan that would mean "what they [other nations] charge us, we charge them," as the president put it.

That reciprocal plan is also still on the table, an administration official said, adding that the president is inclined to tariff every country that the U.S. runs a trade deficit with, and that he wants a "clean number" for each country, though no final decisions have been made.