President Donald Trump said on Monday any country that does business with Iran will face a tariff rate of 25% on trade with the U.S., as Washington weighs a response to the situation in Iran which is seeing its biggest anti-government protests in years.
"Effective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America," Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Tariffs are paid by U.S. importers of goods from those countries. Iran has been heavily sanctioned by Washington for years.
"This Order is final and conclusive," Trump said without providing any further detail. Top export destinations for Iranian goods include China, the United Arab Emirates and India.
There was no official documentation from the White House of the policy on its website, nor information about the legal authority Trump would use to impose the tariffs, or whether they would be aimed at all of Iran's trading partners.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Iran, which had a 12-day war with U.S. ally Israel last year and whose nuclear facilities the U.S. military bombed in June, is seeing its biggest anti-government demonstrations in years.
Trump has said the U.S. may meet Iranian officials and that he was in contact with Iran's opposition, while piling pressure on its leaders, including threatening military action.
Tehran said on Monday (12 January) it was keeping communication channels with Washington open as Trump considered how to respond to the situation in Iran, which has posed one of the gravest tests of clerical rule in the country since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Demonstrations evolved from complaints about dire economic hardships to defiant calls for the fall of the deeply entrenched clerical establishment.
U.S.-based rights group HRANA said it had verified the deaths of 599 people - 510 protesters and 89 security personnel - since the protests began on 28 December.
While air strikes were one of many alternatives open to Trump, "diplomacy is always the first option for the president," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday.
During the course of his second term in office, Trump has often threatened and imposed tariffs on other countries over their ties with U.S. adversaries and over trade policies that he has described as unfair to Washington.
Trump's trade policy is under legal pressure as the U.S. Supreme Court is considering striking down a broad swathe of Trump's existing tariffs.
Iran, a member of the OPEC oil producers group, exported products to 147 trading partners in 2022, according to World Bank's most recent data.
U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to make the Strait of Hormuz part of U.S. territory have been mocked by Iran's Deputy Foreign Ministe...
Five years ago today, Taliban fighters entered Kabul, completing a rapid takeover of Afghanistan as the former government collapsed....
For fishermen along Pakistan’s southwestern coast, the consequences of the U.S.-Iran conflict are being felt far from the battlefield....
Hundreds of flights have been cancelled or rerouted at Catania Airport over the past week as ash from Mount Etna’s ongoing eruption continues to disrupt air travel in Sicily.
Wildfires across England and Wales have reached their highest level on record, according to the National Fire Chiefs Council, as firefighters struggle to contain outbreaks following a spell of extreme heat.
The U.S. will impose unprecedented measures on Iran in order to economically isolate the country, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said.
U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to make the Strait of Hormuz part of U.S. territory have been mocked by Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, who said the sea passage "cannot be seized by tweet."
At least 47 people have been killed after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off eastern Indonesia early on Saturday, triggering small tsunami waves and dozens of aftershocks, officials say.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised deepening ties with North Korea, saying Moscow and Pyongyang are coordinating their efforts to ensure “regional security and stability”.
Russia and Ukraine traded large-scale overnight attacks targeting energy, industrial and military facilities on Saturday, with a three-month-old baby killed and 11 people injured in a Russian drone strike on a residential building in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.
At least 47 people have been killed after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off eastern Indonesia early on Saturday, triggering small tsunami waves and dozens of aftershocks, officials say.
Jason Arday, the former University of Cambridge professor at the centre of a plagiarism row, has been found dead. He was appointed Cambridge's youngest ever Black professor in 2023, but quit on 5 August, after being accused of lifting passages from his PhD from the work of other academics.
Wildfires across England and Wales have reached their highest level on record, according to the National Fire Chiefs Council, as firefighters struggle to contain outbreaks following a spell of extreme heat.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment