President Trump’s latest tariffs sent shock waves throughout Asia, heaping additional turmoil on companies already grappling with uncertainty, while adding further complexity for trade officials ironing out the details of recently struck trade agreements.
As the source of about 40 percent of goods imported into the United States, Asia has borne the brunt of Mr. Trump’s campaign to rewrite the rules of global trade. Trade officials across the region have scrambled to strike deals with his administration over the last several months to prevent punishing tariffs from crippling domestic industries.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump announced another round of tariffs, which would go into effect on Oct. 1, applying import duties ranging from 25 percent to 100 percent on pharmaceuticals, heavy trucks, kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and upholstered furniture. A significant portion of furniture and kitchen cabinet manufacturing originates from China and Southeast Asia.
In a sign of the frenetic nature of U.S. policy, Mr. Trump’s own trade representative, who was in Malaysia on Thursday negotiating with officials from Asian countries, signaled that the administration was not planning more tariffs.
“What we are focused on now are the negotiations, not putting out rounds of tariffs,” Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, told reporters at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Kuala Lumpur.
Twelve hours later, Mr. Trump announced the sweeping new tariffs on his social media feed.
The new import duties build on the growing list of Mr. Trump’s industry-specific tariffs with an outsize impact in Asia, affecting the import of automobiles as well as key materials such as copper, steel and aluminum. Mr. Trump announced the new duties despite many unresolved issues related to his so-called reciprocal tariffs, which were announced in April and are still being negotiated with countries in Asia. He reached an agreement in July with the European Union, another major American trading partner.
So far, the United States has failed to strike a trade deal with Asia’s two biggest economies: China and India. The White House secured commitments with Japan and South Korea over the summer, but both of those countries are balking on exactly how to execute the key component of the deal — a combined $900 billion in investments in the United States.
Another factor hanging over the negotiations is a legal question about Mr. Trump’s use of emergency economic powers as the legal grounding for some of his tariffs. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in November to review a lower-court ruling that invalidated many of the global tariffs, stating that the emergency law the president invoked did not grant him the authority to impose his sprawling tariff campaign.
In Southeast Asia, many countries are awaiting U.S. guidance on a key part of Mr. Trump’s strategy to prevent China from circumventing import duties: transshipments. The question is what constitutes a transshipped product, or goods indirectly shipped to the American market via other countries. Under its agreement with Vietnam, Mr. Trump has said transshipments will be subject to a 40 percent additional import tariff.
Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region at the investment bank Natixis, said the latest tariffs were aimed, in part, at closing loopholes that allow Chinese goods to pass through another country with lower import duties. Mr. Trump has also imposed tariffs on companies in certain industries, like steel, and those are applied regardless of where the foreign goods are produced.
“China is facing a world with fewer holes,” she said.
On Thursday, the president also said the United States would begin imposing a 50 percent tariff on imported kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and associated products, along with a 30 percent tax on imported upholstered furniture.
In Malaysia, where 60 percent of its furniture exports go to the United States, there was concern that this would damage one of the country’s key industries. As a major manufacturer of dining tables, chairs and upholstered sofas, Malaysia exported about $750 million worth of furniture to the United States in the first six months of this year.
“The new tariffs on furniture will greatly weaken price competitiveness and it is expected to accelerate the decline in orders further, as U.S. buyers may scale back purchases,” said the Muar Furniture Association, an industry trade group in Malaysia.
Analysts said Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, were being targeted because many Chinese manufacturers have relocated factories outside of China to reduce tariff exposure to the United States.
The Trump administration is “using other levers to keep made in China and made by China goods out, even as details of trade deals continue to be hammered out,” said Priyanka Kishore, an economist in Singapore and the founder of Asia Decoded, a consulting firm.
In a note to clients on Friday, the research firm Capital Economics said the “next obvious target” for product-specific tariffs would be semiconductors — a move that would have significant consequences for Asia. Last month, Mr. Trump threatened to put 100 percent tariffs on semiconductors.
It is unclear how U.S. officials would proceed with tariffs on the industry, which has a complex and highly global supply chain. Many chips are manufactured in Taiwan and South Korea, and then sent to another country, such as Malaysia, for testing and processing.
A semiconductor tariff would further complicate matters for South Korea, which reached a preliminary trade deal with the United States in late July. At the time, South Korea agreed to a $350 billion investment package in exchange for the United States lowering tariffs on the country’s exports to 15 percent. But subsequent talks to hash out details soon hit a snag over the proposed investment.
This week, South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, met with the U.S. Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, during his trip to the United Nations General Assembly. South Korean officials insisted that the investment comprise primarily loans and loan guarantees, while the U.S. negotiators wanted South Korea to take equity in American companies and projects.
South Korea also raised concerns that such a large sum could lead to a currency crisis for the Korean won without the United States agreeing to foreign currency exchange safeguards, said Kim Yong-beom, South Korea’s presidential chief of staff for policy. However, even as South Korea refused to cave to all of the American demands, Mr. Trump told reporters that Seoul would pay the $350 billion “up front,” like Japan.
“In negotiations, both sides should sit down face-to-face and engage in sincere dialogue,” Mr. Kim said. But not all the discussions have been “reasonable and normal,” he said. “So we are having some difficulty.”
South Korea is hoping to avoid the type of unpopular deal that Japan struck with the United States. This month, Japan signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States stating outright that Mr. Trump, not Japanese officials, would select how the $550 billion would be invested. If Japan goes against his wishes, he will have the right to impose higher tariffs.
Japan had little choice but to acquiesce to Mr. Trump — a sentiment that is becoming increasingly pervasive across Asia.
“We have to deal with it,” said Liew Chin Tong, deputy trade minister of Malaysia. “This is Trump.”
Meaghan Tobin contributed reporting from Taipei, Taiwan.