US customs agents on Saturday began collecting President Donald Trump’s unilateral 10% tariff on all imports from many countries, with higher levies on goods from 57 larger trading partners due to start next week.
Media Talk Africa reports that the initial 10% baseline tariff took effect at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses at 12:01 a.m. ET (0401 GMT), ushering in Trump’s full rejection of the post-World War Two system of mutually agreed tariff rates.
A trade lawyer at Hogan Lovells and former White House trade adviser during Trump’s first term, Kelly Ann Shaw, said this is the single biggest trade action of our lifetime.
Shaw told a Brookings Institution event on Thursday that she expected the tariffs to evolve over time as countries seek to negotiate lower rates.
“But this is huge. This is a pretty seismic and significant shift in the way that we trade with every country on earth,” she added.
The Wednesday tariff announcement shook global stock markets to their core, wiping out $5 trillion in stock market value for 500 companies by the close of Friday, a record two-day decline.
Prices for oil and commodities were said to have plunged, while investors fled to the safety of government bonds.
Among the countries first hit with the 10% tariff are Australia, Britain, Colombia, Argentina, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
A US Customs and Border Protection bulletin to shippers indicates no grace period for cargoes on the water at midnight on Saturday.
However, a US Customs and Border Protection bulletin did provide a 51-day grace period for cargoes loaded onto vessels or planes and in transit to the US before 12:01 a.m. ET Saturday.
