As per the latest announcement from the US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, the tariff cuts cover an array of products ranging from US corn to cosmetics and from Chinese household appliances to toys.

“Under the US-China Board of Trade, both countries have each recommended USD 30 billion of trade in non-sensitive goods for more favorable tariff treatment,” Greer said in a media briefing on Sunday.

“For the United States, that was unlocking improved market access for about 30% of US exports to China,” he said further.

The reciprocal tariff reduction, along with the extension of a trade truce, was among the key takeaways from the second summit this year between Xi and Trump, with the Chinese president paying his reciprocal visit to Washington last week.

One of two lists from ⁠the White House showed that China planned to trim duties on various US agricultural goods, including corn, wheat, sorghum, meat, dairy, vegetable oils, and meals.

The list, however, did not include soybeans.

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Carney, while confirming the news from his end, sounded cautious as he remarked, ‌”Substantial progress has been made, although there is important work still to be done.”

Trump’s Truth Social post said that the Republican paused the tariffs “based on the fact that Canada and the USA, subject to the finalization of documents, have a DEAL.”

Trump and Carney spoke on Tuesday afternoon, their second conversation this week. Their negotiators, however, have been involved in weeks of intense, in-depth talks regarding the sticky points affecting the bilateral trade between the North American nations.

“While we continue this work, Canada remains focused on building a stronger, more independent, and more competitive economy at home,” Carney said.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer’s office said the deal will include “comprehensive market access for all American goods, economic security commitments, digital trade alignment, and other provisions.”

Through a proclamation posted ⁠on the White House website, Trump also announced that he had received Canada’s commitment to address Washington’s concerns regarding duties on dairy products, alcoholic beverages, and motor vehicles.

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The White House has been relentless in terms of persisting with Trump’s vision of a near-global tariff, despite the United States Supreme Court’s February 2026 verdict, that shot down the Republican’s “reciprocal” duties of 10% to 50%, that were imposed ‌under a national emergencies law to try to shrink Uncle Sam’s trade deficit.

The new tariffs, announced in a Federal Register notice, cover 99.4% of US imports. They also include numerous product exemptions, such as oil and gas, fertilizer, and certain food items.

“The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century and rigorously enforces it. It’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same. Today’s action will begin to correct what is both a human rights abuse and a distortive trade practice to improve the welfare of workers everywhere,” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said while announcing the tariffs.

Imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act ⁠of 1974, the new duties allow the Trump administration to maintain a tariff floor on virtually all US imports despite the Supreme Court setback. Also, Section 301 has a prior history of surviving court challenges.

Argentina, Bangladesh, Britain, Cambodia, Canada, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Trinidad and Tobago will face a 10% tariff on their exports. The European Union, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Switzerland have been assigned rates that, combined with pre-existing most-favored-nation (MFN) tariff rates, totaled 10% or 12.5%.

Vietnam, which issued a new decree this week to ban imports of goods made with forced labor, has been kept at the 12.5% slab. China, often accused by Washington of detaining Uyghur minorities in work camps, got featured in the same bracket too.

For the countries already having trade deals with Washington, the new forced labor duties would not push them above the caps decided under the bilateral arrangements.

However, the action has drawn stronger protests from trade partners like Australia and Brazil, who described the new tariffs as unjustified and said they would seek to have them removed, while Norway said there was “no basis” for them.

Canada, hit on Monday with new Trump tariffs on USD 20 billion worth of goods, saw its minister in charge of US trade, Dominic LeBlanc, commenting, “We will continue engaging constructively with the United States on this matter, as well as other outstanding issues, over the coming ⁠weeks to the mutual benefit of our citizens.”

However, the response from Prime Minister Mark Carney was a severe one, as he said, “Canada ‌will do whatever it takes to defend itself in a trade war with the United States, including possible retaliatory measures. We are intensifying our trade negotiations with the United States and will not hesitate ⁠to defend our interests if we have to.”

Carney, who was attending a meeting of provincial premiers after Washington’s new 50% tariff announcements, which would take effect on August 19, described the whole situation as an “unwarranted” one.

While Trump and Carney previously agreed to intensify bilateral trade talks, Washington’s latest tariff aggression, along with the White House’s non-commitment on extending the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) for another 16 years, have complicated things now.

The US is negotiating with Canada and Mexico on separate tracks, and Washington has said it is making more progress with Mexico. As per the analysts, this statement also raises the risk of Uncle Sam possibly seeking to force concessions on Canada that Mexico agrees to.

Talking about the US-Mexico talks, officials from both nations will meet for a fourth round of negotiations to revamp ‌the North American trade pact in September, after talks this week exposed disagreements over changes to automotive content rules and other issues.

Greer met with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard this week during a third round of talks over the USMCA. The officials discussed sectors like autos, economic security, labor, agriculture, and electronic payment services, as well as steel and aluminum products.

While the US and Mexico are neogtiating the six-year-old USMCA, which underpins nearly USD 1.6 trillion in regional trade that was once duty-free, if the negotiations spill into 2027, it will only result into a prolong business and investment uncertainty, something that both Mexico and Canada have been seeking to ease with Uncle Sam.

Washington has been demanding that vehicles contain 50% of US-made content to qualify for preferential market access into the world’s largest economy. The proposal, however, has been a non-starter for the Mexican government, with reports suggesting that the Latin American nation being unwilling to accept “even 1%” of American content, as ‌such a ⁠provision “opens the door for a potential increase in the future” and sets a “problematic precedent.”

“Under the current trade pact, vehicles must contain 75% North American content to qualify for duty-free treatment, with 40% produced by workers earning at least USD 16 per hour—a threshold met in the US and Canada. The agreement, however, does not require that a fixed share of content come from any one country,” sources told the Reuters.

Mexico also wants Washington to reduce “Section 232” national security tariffs of 25% on autos and 50% on steel and aluminum before making concessions on other issues. But Trump has shown no sign of easing the tariffs.

The auto tariffs have also put Mexican auto factories at a cost disadvantage to competitors in Japan, South Korea, and the European Union (EU), which face a 15% levy to export cars to the US with no regional content requirements.

The US has reportedly nudged Mexican officials to propose alternative ways to meet Trump’s goals ⁠of bringing more automotive production back to the American shores, displacing Asian components (read China) in the North American supply chain, and reducing Washington’s trade deficit with Mexico.

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The three-day talks, which do not include Ottawa, are also the first formal discussions on changes to the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement since the Trump administration decided not to extend the six-year-old regional trade pact on July 1.

As the USMCA faces the threat of being shut down within 10 years if the three countries don’t agree on changes, the US Chamber of Commerce has already urged Trump to keep intact the trade pact’s trilateral structure, tariff-free access and strong enforcement that underpin exchange of goods worth USD 1.6 trillion across the North America.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has already laid out his administration’s number one priority: Making sure Washington, through the USMCA talks, lowers its trade deficits with Canada and Mexico, apart from reshoring ⁠more manufacturing to mainland America.

The United States’ trade deficit with Mexico, in 2025, grew by USD 28 billion, or 17%, to USD 197 billion, according to data from the US Census Bureau, which comes under the Commerce Department. The trade gap with Canada, on the other hand, fell by USD 12.9 billion, or 21%, last year to USD 48.3 billion.

“We want the outcomes to make sense. We want to have more auto manufacturing here, and we’re seeing it,” Greer told CNBC, citing moves by automakers to open new assembly capacity in the US, including Toyota’s expansion of a Texas plant to build trucks now assembled in Mexico.

General Motors will incur some USD 1.5 billion in expenses this year in part to move some vehicle production to the US. In 2025, the Detroit automaker has disclosed plans to build two Chevrolet SUV models in the world’s largest economy while shifting some of its manufacturing from Mexico from 2027 onwards.

“That’s the outcome that (Trump) wants. I think also if we can have an arrangement with Mexico, with Canada, that we are trying to emphasize Canadian, Mexican, and US content in goods traded in North America, that’s a good outcome because that helps get supply chains back here in North America,” Greer added.

During bilateral USMCA talks with Mexico in May this year, in a significant departure from the existing provisions, USTR proposed requiring that 50% of the value of North American-built vehicles originate in the United States. The demand will be a difficult one to meet for the automakers in terms of making logistical changes in their highly integrated regional supply chains.

Mexico’s new ambassador to the US, Roberto Lazzeri, said that the Latin American country was expecting to reach a new deal by the 2026-end, and that he thinks the United States and Canada are aiming for the same goal.

“Every moment that we’re losing, I think we are losing competitiveness, market share, and investment, so it’s in the best interest of all three of us to get to a position of resolution soon. Mexico shares the Trump administration’s goal of bringing more manufacturing to North America, including to the US,” said Lazzeri, a former investment banker and finance ministry official.

Talking about the new tariff warfare between the United States and Canada, the Trump administration’s new levies on nearly USD 20 billion worth of Canadian goods came as a response against Ottawa’s import taxes on American autos, steel, aluminum, and dairy, as well as provincial alcohol bans.

That move deepens a rift that has kept Canada largely sidelined in the USMCA negotiations, as Greer has said there has been little movement towards concessions.

Defending the Trump administration’s decision, Treasury ‌Secretary Scott Bessent, during an interaction with the Fox Business Network, accused the Mark Carney government of being “highly discriminatory” on dairy products, apart from ⁠pointing toward US alcohol and beverages being moved from Canadian shelves.

“This is really just ⁠reciprocity in terms of what they’ve done to our great US ⁠companies,” Bessent told the “Mornings with Maria” program.

Mexico has found appreciations for itself, with Greer lauding the Latin American nation for its “lack of retaliation to US tariffs” and “pragmatic” approach to negotiations that include working to align Mexico’s export controls with those of the Uncle Sam, steps to ⁠protect intellectual property rights (IPR) and moving to curb the export of avocados grown on illegally deforested land.

As per Greer’s office, the talks in Mexico City will dig into technical details of the US-Mexico trade in crucial sectors like autos, steel, aluminum, agriculture, and labor.

The discussions will also focus on “economic security,” USTR’s term for raising regional trade protections to keep China and other Asian countries from using Mexico and Canada to access the lucrative American market ⁠on preferential terms.

The China point will be a contentious one, given Beijing’s growing footprint in Mexico’s car market.

As per the new distribution figures, Chinese car sales rose 30% in the first half of 2026, despite 50% tariffs imposed in January, with Chinese brands raising their market share to 17% from 14% a year earlier.

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