Bessent: Trump tariffs set to 'boomerang back' to higher rates if deals not reached

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that countries will see their respective tariff rates “boomerang back” on Aug. 1 to the higher levels announced three months ago, if they don’t strike a deal with the U.S. sooner.

In Sunday show interviews, Bessent doubled down on President Trump’s comments Friday, in which the president told reporters that the “reciprocal” tariffs — first announced on April 2 and then paused for 90 days a week later — would officially take effect on Aug. 1, not July 9, when the 90-day pause is set to expire.

“We'll see,” Bessent said on CNN's “State of the Union," when asked "what happens" on July 9. “I'm not going to give away the playbook because we're going to be very busy over the next 72 hours."

Bessent said Trump will “be sending letters to some of our trading partners, saying that if you don't move things along, then on Aug. 1, you will boomerang back to your April 2 tariff level.”

“So, I think we're going to see a lot of deals very quickly,” the secretary continued. “And, you know, Dana [Bash], we're going to send out probably 100 letters to small countries where we don't have very much trade, and most of those are already at the baseline 10 percent.”

Bessent insisted, however, that the new effective date is neither a new deadline nor a pause on the original deadline announced three months ago.

“It's not a new deadline,” Bessent said on CNN. “We are saying, this is when it's happening. If you want to speed things up, have at it. If you want to go back to the old rate, that's your choice.”

In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” anchor Shannon Bream asked if it is “fair” to call the new date a “bit of a pause.”

“I don’t think it’s a bit of a pause because I think what’s happened is, there’s a lot of congestion going into the home stretch,” he said.

Trump has “created maximum leverage” ahead of the deadline to strike a deal to stave off the higher reciprocal tariffs, Bessent told her.

“So, by telling our trading partners that they could boomerang back to the April 2nd date, I think it’s really going to move things along the next couple of days and weeks,” Bessent said.