Tomorrow’s promised US tariffs will create “practical nightmares” and “a bureaucratic monster of new customs procedures”, with some countries directly in the firing line.
Yesterday, The United States Trade Representative (USTR) office released the 2025 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers for the US (NTE), alphabetically dissecting the trade restrictions imposed by nearly 60 countries, from Algeria to Vietnam.
“Omission of particular trading partners and barriers does not imply that they are not of concern to the United States”, added the USTR.
The report examines government laws, regulations, policies, or practices that “distort or undermine fair competition”. Shippers could gauge the looming ‘reciprocal tariff’ threat to their supply chain by examining what was identified about their sourcing locations.
While some countries seem to garner little attention from the USTR – for example, the ‘Arab League’, taking up only three-quarters of page 13 – China spans pages 48 to 95, and the EU covers pages 129 to 162.
“The findings of the 2025 NTE underscore President Trump’s ‘America First’ trade policy and agenda,” said US trade representative Jamieson Greer. “Under his leadership, this administration is working diligently to address these unfair and non-reciprocal practices, helping restore fairness and put hardworking American businesses and workers first in the global market.”
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said: “Let me be clear, Europe did not start this confrontation. We think it is wrong. But we have the strength to negotiate, and we will always stand up for Europe.
“Tomorrow, we expect another announcement – with so-called ‘reciprocal’ tariffs that will immediately apply to almost all goods and many countries in the world.”
Indeed, it was reported yesterday that anxious shippers, including Apple, were booking charters in a pre-tariff frenzy to get goods to the US before expected price increases.
Ms von der Leyen revealed that the EU’s strategy would “focus on three pillars”, the first being “unity and determination”, with a “a strong plan to retaliate, if necessary”.
The second is “diversification”, to increase trade partners across the world, and the third to “unchain the single market” and make international business easier between EU member states.
Shippers and forwarders will be waiting with bated breath to see if President Trump follows through on his tariff threats tomorrow. But at TPM25 by S&P Global, Scott Lincicome, VP general economics at the Cato Institute, said he believed the logistical complexities would make this an unlikely overnight adjustment.
“I could lecture for hours on all the issues the reciprocal tariff regime would raise economically, but what really sticks out most is the practical difficulties of creating a reciprocal tariff regime. This sounds very neat, very simple, very fair, etc. But as a former practitioner, it could be a nightmare,” he said.
“The feasibility, I think, is what at least some folks in the Trump administration don’t really seem to understand. From a purely administrative level, you’re talking about thousands of tariffs on maybe up to 200 different countries.
“So, you’re looking at 750,000 to three million different tariff lines, as opposed to a few thousand today.
“Simply creating those tariff lists, updating them, and monitoring them would be a herculean effort for Customs and the private logistics professionals that are already not sleeping at night.
“Compliance enforcement would be another huge issue, customs rulings on simple things like where a product’s origin actually is.”
Mr Lincicome added: “Then you have things like quantifying and applying remedial tariffs in the system. I used to work in counter-duty investigations and subsidies, these cases took years to finish for a single product in a single country. They want to do this not just for subsidies, but for all non-tariff barriers, which could be almost anything. The metric system might be a non-tariff barrier. Are we going to tariff the metric system?
“And then, finally, there’s this gaming and adjustment issue. People aren’t going to sit still. You’ll see supply chains adjust and complexity increase, transparency decrease, and tons of tariff engineering, rules of origin cases, etc,” he concluded.
Ms von der Leyen also warned that reciprocal tariffs would “create a bureaucratic monster of new customs procedures”.
