President Donald Trump has announced that any country trading with Iran will face a 25 per cent tariff on all US business, as Washington weighs its response to Iran’s biggest anti-government protests in years.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump said: “Effective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America.”
Tariffs are paid by US importers. Iran, an OPEC oil-producing group member, has been heavily sanctioned by Washington for years.
It exports high volumes of oil to China, with Turkey, Iraq, the UAE and India among its other top trading partners.
“This Order is final and conclusive,” Mr Trump said without providing any further detail.
There was no official documentation from the White House of the policy on its website, nor information about the legal authority Mr Trump would use to impose the tariffs, or whether they would be aimed at all of Iran’s trading partners.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The Chinese embassy in Washington criticised Mr Trump’s approach, saying China will take “all necessary measures” to safeguard its interests and opposed “any illicit unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction”.
“China’s position against the indiscriminate imposition of tariffs is consistent and clear. Tariff wars and trade wars have no winners, and coercion and pressure cannot solve problems,” a spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in Washington said on X/Twitter.
Iran, which engaged in a 12-day war with US ally Israel last year and whose nuclear facilities the US military bombed in June, is currently experiencing its biggest anti-government demonstrations in years.
Mr Trump has said the US may meet Iranian officials and that he was in contact with Iran’s opposition, while piling pressure on its leaders, including threatening military action.
Tehran said on Monday it was keeping communication channels with Washington open as Mr Trump considered how to respond to the situation in Iran, which has posed one of the gravest tests of clerical rule in the country since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Demonstrations evolved from complaints about dire economic hardships to defiant calls for the fall of the deeply entrenched clerical establishment.
US-based rights group HRANA said it had verified the deaths of 599 people – 510 protesters and 89 security personnel – since the protests began on 28 December.
While air strikes were one of many alternatives open to Mr Trump, “diplomacy is always the first option for the president,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday.
During the course of his second term in office, Mr Trump has often threatened and imposed tariffs on other countries over their ties with US adversaries and over trade policies that he has described as unfair to Washington.
Mr Trump’s trade policy is under legal pressure as the US Supreme Court is considering striking down a broad swathe of the existing tariffs.
Iran exported products to 147 trading partners in 2022, according to the World Bank’s most recent data.
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