WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Saturday said his administration is immediately sending letters to the first batch of 10 to 12 countries, sharing details of reciprocal tariff rates and the entire process could be completed by July 9.“We are going to start sending letters out to various countries starting tomorrow,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews air base in Maryland before departing to Iowa. The US President, however, did not name the countries. The President said the reciprocal tariffs would come into effect from Aug 1. “The money is going to come to the United States from Aug 1,” he added.Trump suggested that the letters would explain what the countries are going to be paying in tariff to the US. He said the lower limit in tariff could be in the range of 10-20% and the higher bracket would be in the range of 60-70%.Meanwhile, Japan’s chief trade negotiator Ryosei Akazawa held two phone meetings with US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick to discuss tariffs as a July 9 deadline for higher levies nears. Akazawa and Lutnick talked for 45 minutes on Thursday and for about an hour on Saturday, reaffirmed their respective positions on the US tariffs and “had an in depth exchange of views,” according to a statement by Japan’s Cabinet Secretariat. The two sides will continue to coordinate, the statement read.Vietnam’s growth accelerated in the second quarter as foreign buyers raced to avoid threatened tariffs of as much as 46% on sales to the US. The GDP rose 7.96% in the April-June period from a year earlier, according to data from the National Statistics Office in Hanoi on Saturday. That’s faster than the 6.85% median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of eight economists, and a revised 7.05% expansion in the first quarter.
