Trump Finds New Trade Targets - Pharmaceuticals, Kitchen Cabinets and Heavy Trucks

The president posted on his Truth Social platform, he’s plastering import taxes – tariffs – of 100% on pharmaceutical drugs, 50% on kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities and 25% on heavy trucks.

And he’s not waiting around to do it. The tariffs, he said, would take effect Wednesday.

Thursday’s social media barrage was just the latest in Trump’s push to upend American trade policy, which for decades pushed for lower trade barriers around the world.

In place of an open market, Trump has built a tariff wall around the U.S. economy, slapping double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country on earth and targeting products (steel, aluminum, autos) with specific taxes of their own.

Trump says the tariffs will protect U.S. industries from foreign competition, encourage companies to bring production to the United States and raise money for the U.S. Treasury.

They certainly have become a moneymaker for the federal government. Since fiscal year 2025 began last Oct. 1, the U.S. Treasury has collected $172 billion in customs duties, up by $96 billion (or 126%) from the same period in fiscal 2024. Still, tariffs account for less than 4% of federal revenue.

A message to Mexico?

Charles Clevenger, a supply chain specialist at the consultancy UHY, said tariffs on pharmaceuticals make sense because so much production has shifted away from the United States to Europe and Asia. Likewise, North Carolina and other states in the American South have also lost furniture factories to cheaper competitors in the China.

But he was surprised by the tariffs on heavy trucks because “we do have a rather robust industry’’ – with manufacturers like Paccar (parent company of Peterbilt and Kenworth).

But Appleton at New York Law School suspects the tariff is aimed at Mexico, where many heavy trucks are made. The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade deal negotiated in Trump’s first term, is coming up for negotiation. “I don’t think that (the tariff) was done by accident, Appleton said. “They wanted to put some more pressure onto the Mexicans” to make concessions in the talks.

Using Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Trump had launched investigations into whether imports of pharmaceuticals, lumber and heavy trucks posed a threat to U.S. national security.

He’d justified his broader tariffs another way: by declaring national emergencies under a 1977 law. But two courts have ruled that Trump overstepped his authority by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose import taxes. The Supreme Court is hearing the case on appeal.

Read the full article published by APNews.