Trump trade memo won’t impose new tariffs on day one

President-elect Donald Trump is set to sign a series of executive orders as soon as he is sworn in, but imposing tariffs on the United States’ trading partners will not be among the measures taken Monday.

Trump is set to release a sweeping trade memorandum on Monday that directs federal agencies to study and evaluate unfair trade practices and monetary policies with other countries, particularly China, Canada and Mexico. However, the memo stopped short of imposing new duties on countries.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Trump’s decision to suspend the imposition of tariffs on his first day in the White House.

The president-elect’s trade plan could evolve from what he touted during the election campaign. His camp has discussed a schedule of tiered tariffs increasing about 2% to 5% per month for trading partners, Bloomberg News reported last week.

Trump once made universal tariffs a central tenet of his economic campaign, imposing a 20% levy on all imports from all countries, with a particularly harsh rate of 60% for Chinese goods.

Many economists feared that such protectionist trade policy would make the production of goods more expensive and raise consumer prices, just as the world is recovering from the pandemic’s inflation spikes.

— CNBC’s Megan Cassella contributed reporting.