Trump pledges auto, pharma tariffs in ‘near future,’ sowing more trade confusion

President Donald Trump on Monday said he will soon announce tariffs targeting automobiles, pharmaceuticals and other industries, signaling his plans to pile more sweeping duties on top of his forthcoming “reciprocal tariffs.”

“We’ll be announcing cars very shortly,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting. “We already announced steel, as you know, and aluminum.”

“We’ll be announcing pharmaceuticals at some point,” he said, “because we have to have pharmaceuticals.”

“So we’ll be announcing some of these things in the very near future, not the long future, the very near future,” Trump said.

Trump at another White House event later Monday added the lumber and semiconductor industries to his list, saying tariffs on those two sectors would come “down the road.”

Yet even as he piled on new sectors for potential tariffs, Trump said at the same event that he “may give a lot of countries breaks” on the reciprocal tariffs, which are set to take effect April 2.

When pressed for clarification on whether sectoral tariffs will also start that day, Trump initially said, “Yeah, it’s going to be everything.”

Then he said, “but not all tariffs are included that day.”

He also hinted that tariffs on autos may be announced before the reciprocal tariffs kick off.

“We’ll be announcing that fairly soon over the next few days, probably, and then April 2 comes, that’ll be reciprocal tariffs,” he said.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the White House was likely to exclude industry-specific tariffs from the April 2 batch, despite Trump’s suggestion a week earlier that both types of tariffs would start the same day.

The president’s latest comments came hours after he vowed to slap 25% tariffs on all countries that buy oil and gas from Venezuela.

“We’ve been ripped off by every country in the world,” Trump said in the Cabinet meeting.

“We did something with Venezuela, which is long in the making,” he said. “And we’ll be announcing cars very shortly.”

A White House official told CNBC earlier Monday that the tariffs targeting specific sectors “may happen or may not.”

“No final decision’s been made as far as sectoral being tacked onto reciprocal,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Major stock indexes shot up Monday following the reports that Trump may be softening his tariff plans.

The official did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for additional comment following Trump’s remarks in the Cabinet meeting.