Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2666 actions· ✨ 90 recent

President Trump signed Executive Order 14345 on 4 September 2025, implementing the July 2025 US-Japan trade agreement by setting a 15% baseline ad-valorem tariff on nearly all Japanese goods — raising any Column 1 (MFN) duty rate below 15% up to that floor, including on agricultural lines such as cereals, vegetables, and fruits and nuts. The modification applies retroactively to Japanese products entered for consumption on or after 12:01 a.m. EDT, 7 August 2025, and supersedes the higher 24% country-specific reciprocal rate Japan faced under the April 2025 "Liberation Day" schedule. Aerospace products are exempted entirely, autos/auto parts receive the same 15% treatment (down from a separate 25% Section 232 rate), and Japan committed to $550bn in US investment and $8bn/year in additional US agricultural purchases (rice, corn, soybeans, fertilizer, bioethanol) as consideration.

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/778 of 14 April 2025, adopted under Regulation (EU) No 654/2014 (the EU enforcement regulation for international trade rights), reinstates the EU's 2018 and 2020 commercial rebalancing measures against the United States and adds new countermeasures in response to the second Trump administration's 10 February 2025 Section 232 proclamations, which restored a universal 25% tariff on steel imports and raised the aluminium tariff to 25% effective 12 March 2025 (filed as 2025-02-11-us-section-232-steel-aluminum-global-tariff-reinstatement). The combined package targets approximately €26 billion of EU imports from the United States — matching the scope of US measures affecting EU exports — and combines the reinstatement of pre-existing duties on a first tranche of products (steel, aluminium, agricultural goods, motorcycles, and other industrial items originally subject to the 2018 and 2020 lists) with new duties on roughly €18 billion of additional US-origin goods spanning poultry, beef, certain seafood, nuts, eggs, dairy, sugar and vegetables on the agricultural side, and steel, aluminium, textiles, leather, appliances, plastics and wood products on the industrial side. Tariff rates layer onto MFN duties at up to 50% for some products, mirroring the structure of the 2018 measures. On the same day the Commission published Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/786, which suspends application of Articles 2 and 3 of 2025/778 for 90 days, until 14 July 2025, to allow space for bilateral negotiations following the US 9 April 2025 announcement of a 90-day pause on its own reciprocal-tariff regime (2025-04-02-us-trump-reciprocal-tariff-regime). The legal scaffolding therefore exists and is in force, but no duties were collected during the suspension window. This is the first standalone EU rebalancing instrument adopted against the United States in the second Trump administration and the first major use of Reg 654/2014 since the 2018-2020 Section 232 episode.